- For the past 13 years, the organization Global Detroit has worked to build an inclusive and prosperous Southeast Michigan.

At the heart of their strategy is making sure that immigrants are a vital part of the city and region's community and economic development plans.

The group also believes immigrants and global talent are key to growing the state's population.

Here's my conversation with Global Detroit's Managing Director, Dr. Alaina Jackson.

Let's start with getting our viewers caught up on what Global Detroit is.

This has been around now for more than a decade.

What does Global Detroit do?

- So, Global Detroit is a regional community and economic development organization with a focus on immigrants and global talent.

We develop and implement inclusive strategies to drive the growth, revitalization, and broadly share prosperity in Detroit and throughout Southeast Michigan.

- And a lot of that work is focused on immigration and immigrants.

The contributions that Global Detroit believes people who come to this country can make and should be able to make in this country and in this city.

And that's a key dynamic and factor right here in Southeast Michigan for lots of reasons.

- Oh, absolutely.

At Global Detroit, we believe that by intentionally including immigrants in our community and economic development strategies, we can spark growth, revitalization, and sustain prosperity throughout Michigan.

And the reality bears that to be true given the economic contributions immigrants make, given the fact that all of our net population growth over the last 30 years has been due to immigration.

And so we firmly believe that an immigrant-inclusive strategy as it relates to both community and economic development, can drive prosperity for all of us.

And that, you know, given the contributions both economically and in terms of population growth that immigrants are making, if we're going to have a growth strategy or a retention strategy, we should definitely invest in one of the strategies that is working for us already, and that is immigration.

And it's working for all of us, for all Michiganders.

- Immigrant-inclusive is the phrase that you used.

That's not always the case.

That's not the default, I think, position that a lot of folks have, and certainly a lot of institutions have.

But talk about what you mean when you say that.

What is immigrant-inclusive?

- So unfortunately, you're right, that isn't always the default, but our history bears this to be true.

You know, Henry Ford, long, long ago decided that he would pay anybody and everybody to work on the line and look what he created from that.

He hired, you know, Chaldean folk.

He hired African American folk.

He hired Asian folk, you know, Irish folk.

And somehow he brought them all together and he knew that if you paid them a living wage, that they could create something and they wouldn't go out of a job because he would pay them enough to buy the cars that they were making and he wouldn't go out of a job.

And so this is a long part of our history in Michigan, but somehow we have gotten away from it.

And I think people don't seem to understand that this is not a zero-sum game strategy.

Research has shown that by intentionally including immigrants in our community and economic development strategies, we can spark growth for everybody.

And so immigrant inclusion looks like language access, immigrant inclusion looks like driver's licenses for everybody so that everybody can get to work.

Immigrant inclusion looks like strategies to help our international students stay here.

They're attending our public universities, we're helping to educate them and grow their acumen in their respective fields.

And so why wouldn't we create a pipeline for them to stay here and continue to contribute to the statewide economy?

- So I do want to talk about the Governor's task force on growing Michigan's population and growing talent here.

You were a member of that task force.

Talk about the work that you were doing and the kind of perspective, I guess, you brought to that work.

- Sure, so I was on the Jobs, Talent and People Work Group, and we were charged with proposing economic development strategies that create safe, vibrant communities and lead to opportunities and upward economic mobility for all Michiganders.

And so we talked about issues that would ensure domestic migration to Michigan, such as retaining young talent, but also attracting new talent.

We talked about and discussed recommendations on how to leverage Michigan's natural resources and how to prepare for the expected climate change.

Climate change migration from other states, for example.

And we try to identify potential workforce strategies and strategic opportunities for Michigan's growth.

I think my perspective, everybody had a unique perspective, it was a really interesting group to participate in and was quite reflective of, you know, all the diverse perspectives one could expect across the state of Michigan.

My perspective was one that once again said, "Hey, we don't have to have a zero-sum game strategy to this.

There's a way for us to promote immigration as an economic development and population growth strategy, and do so in a way that leads to shared prosperity for everybody."

And so I tried to bring recommendations that looked at how we could use immigration to reinforce our talent pipeline.

I brought recommendations around further investing in some of the programs that we already have that we know to be working at Global Detroit, such as our Global Entrepreneur in Residence program that brings founders from other countries to start their businesses here, connects them with universities and they start businesses here that create jobs here, for example, which is what we want.

So those are the types of ideas that I brought to the table, and I found the group to be really receptive to exploring those types of solutions.

- When we think about the goals here, you know, Michigan is not losing population, but it is growing population much more slowly than other states.

And when I say much more slowly, I mean dramatically much more slowly.

There are parts of the country that are really growing and we are only growing a little bit.

It seems to me that one of the obvious differences between Michigan and some of those other places is immigration, the manner in which they attract immigrants in the first place, but also the way they promote the presence of those immigrants in their communities once they're there, and make sure that they're moving through the economy in a way that benefits them and other people.

It's almost like a no-brainer, right?

If you wanna win, find out what the winners are doing, and do the same.

- Yeah, you won't get any argument from me or from anybody from Global Detroit for that fact.

I mean, what we know is that none of the top 100 cities in the United States, that lost population has reversed that population loss without significant immigrant growth.

And for the most part, these large cities that have had actual population rebounds, immigration was the source of all of that net population growth.

And so, you know, once again, we can learn from others and their best practices that this doesn't have to be a zero-sum strategy.

And it's also not just a political or civil rights or justice issue, it's actually a community development issue.

It's actually an economic development issue.

And so when we don't do things like provide reciprocity, right, for people's licenses and certifications and degrees, we lose out.

We lose out on teachers, we lose out on nurses, we lose out on physical therapists, we lose out on engineers.

We lose out on skilled tradesmen.

I mean, we know that there's a skilled tradesman dearth.

We need more electricians, we need more, you know, welders, right?

And so when we don't provide reciprocity, or when we don't allow for driver's licenses to be extended to all residents, we create a gap in the pipeline that doesn't have to exist.

And so we need to rethink some of the policies that we're implementing, or some of the policies that we're refusing to implement.

And think through how they're actually doing more harm than good.