Macomb County immigrants fuel job gains, not losses

Global Detroit graphic

By Chad Selweski 

The Macomb Daily

Posted: 10/08/13

Macomb County’s first “Breakfast of Nations” on Tuesday drew hundreds of ethnic and business leaders who were urged to embrace policies and programs that could boost jobs and the local economy by encouraging more immigration to the county.
Steve Tobocman, founder of Global Detroit, a nonprofit group that promotes demographic diversity, told the hundreds on hand at Macomb Community College Center Campus in Clinton Township the nation needs to stop “demonizing” immigrants.

“The paradigm shift we are seeing is that people are recognizing that immigrants are a catalyst for local and regional economic growth. Immigrants make jobs, they don’t take jobs,” Tobocman said.
In a rapid-fire approach, Tobocman offered evidence that immigrants outpace the U.S.-born population in business startups, entrepreneurship, U.S. patents for inventions and establishing some of the largest corporations in America.
The numerous ethnic groups represented in the crowd at the MCC Lorenzo Cultural Center were told Macomb County and Sterling Heights played a pioneering role in joining 

Welcoming Michigan, another nonprofit organization that, with the support of Gov. Rick Snyder, is hoping to make Michigan the “most pro-immigrant state in the nation.”
County Executive Mark Hackel has embraced those efforts, creating the One Macomb designation to promote diversity and create “vibrant communities” that add to the county’s enticements.
Kurt Metzger, founder of the Data Driven Detroit research group, said that Macomb has emerged as one of the top counties in Michigan for its growing immigrant population, plus its attraction of minority populations from other counties, particularly Wayne County. But the change in image has not been noticed.

“To see all these changes, and to see how welcoming you are in Macomb, is exciting to watch,” said the DDD director. “But … the rest of the region has no idea what’s going on in Macomb.”

Almost 100 languages are now spoken across the county, and in some residential areas the concentration of foreign-born people approaches 50 percent of the population.
Cities and townships once dominated by three ethnic groups — Germans, Italians and Poles — are now home to families who emigrated from Iraq, India, Albania, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Mexico, the Philippines, Serbia, Croatia, Ukraine, Laos and Thailand.
According to Global Detroit, much of Macomb County’s foreign-born population has established residency along the Mound/Dequindre corridor in Warren and Sterling Heights. These ethnic clusters also spill over into Shelby Township, Troy and Madison Heights.

Macomb County’s melting pot features the largest Albanian population of any county in America. Yet the Albanians and other prominent ethnic groups are largely “invisible” because they are not concentrated in one small area, according to a Global Detroit/DDD study.
That study found that southeast Michigan’s foreign-born population outranks the native-born population in several categories: college degrees, home ownership, income, employment, and intact two-parent families.
While much of Michigan is suffering from an aging population, exacerbated by a lack of immigration and the flight of college graduates, Macomb County enjoyed fast growth from 2000-10 and the gains in immigration and in-state migration — with a spike in young families and twenty-somethings — has now put the county’s estimated population at 851,000. 

Global Detroit graphic