Cleveland's Elite & Their Penchant for "Preferred" Immigrants

Do you get the sense that the Center for Population Dynamics at Cleveland State University is the public relations arm of Global Cleveland-- and that Albert Ratner, Chairman Emeritus of mega real estate developer Forest City Enterprises, and founder and force behind Global Cleveland, is the one pulling the strings? Global Cleveland has spent so much time and money trying to decide what it wants to be when it grows up, who it will serve, and why it is even needed.

First it was boomerangers.

Then it was refugees.

As the attached and other articles suggest, now it looks like the focus is on high skilled immigrants --- who, incidentally, don't really need a multi-million dollar non-profit bureaucracy to provide them a "civic support system that can tap them in locally." It's like a money-sucking, amorphous civic initiative breaking bad -- vying desperately for attention, trying to prove it's relevant, but in the end, wasting precious oxygen and doing more damage than good.

Regardless of its changing mission, GC remains constant on one thing: working to ensure that Cleveland does not "appear" xenophobic and unwelcoming to immigrants, despite the nativist leanings of its Mayor and local Democratic Party leadership.

Why are they so desperate to "appear" inclusive of immigrants (at least of the segment that is not of the "lower skilled" kind)? Because Cleveland is an outlier on immigrant inclusion and economic development --- and City leaders don't want to look too bad. Check out Pittsburgh's new immigration blueprint, announced last week. Steel City joins progressive immigration initiatives championed by political, business and philanthropic leaders in Detroit (and here), Cincinnati (and here), Dayton, St. Louis (and here), Indianapolis, Philly,Columbus (and here), Buffalo, Toledo, Akron, Syracuse, Utica, Lansing, and so many other cities. You will find nothing like this in Cleveland. These other rust belt and midwest cities are not creating a focus on high skill immigrants. They see value in welcoming and integrating ALL immigrants. They know that creating such a caste system, sounds, well, Un-American. In fact, the country was founded, in large part, to escape the rigid elitism and social class system of Europe. As Trump attacks Mexicans and other immigrants, Cleveland continues to carve out SOME immigrant demographics it likes, while leaving out the others. To many, this is divisive.

Particularly at a time in our nation's history when immigrants are the most vulnerable, are the objects of ridicule and disenfranchisement, and even violence, these other cities know that it is critical to work hard to include and integrate ALL immigrants--- not just the PhDs working at the local university or hospital.

It's not just about "grow[ing] our head count and fill[ing] our empty homes."

It's about creating ONE community.

This article, written by the director of CSU Center for Population Dynamics, a protege of Ratner AND an Advisory Board Member of GC (although the article seems to omit this association), misses several points.

One is that immigrant inclusion is not just about economic development, it's also about building equitable, inclusive and culturally dynamic cities -- regardless of the pedigree, diplomas and bank accounts of the foreign born. Is Cleveland a welcoming city for immigrants? If so, WHICH immigrants--- only the rich, famous and highly-educated? Ask the tens of thousands of working-class immigrants living in Cleveland, some without papers, whether they feel that the city is "open" to them.

Second, from an economic and neighborhood development standpoint, an over-emphasis on the highly educated, leads to what management guru Peter Drucker calls a "healthy brain in a dead body" and a disregard for the "no-tech" entrepreneurship that is needed at the base of the economic pyramid, that shapes whether a community is truly entrepreneurial, or not, and therefore equitable, or not. The article fails to highlight the amazing innovation, job-creation, and neighborhood revitalization power of immigrants without a college diploma.

Peter Drucker's 1985 book, "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" talks of the dangers of ignoring demographic patterns.

In this book, Drucker also criticizes public policies that seek to centrally "plan" entrepreneurship and innovation (as opposed to a "decentralized" and "autonomous" entrepreneurial ecosystems) and that seek to build high-tech and high-tech alone ("a healthy brain in a dead body")

Passages from Drucker's book help illuminate:

On the Development of an "Entrepreneurial Society"

"The first priority in talking about the public policies and governmental measures needed in the entrepreneurial society is to define what will not work -- especially as the policies that will not work are so popular today.

"Planning" as the term is commonly understood is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy. Innovation does indeed need to be purposeful and entrepreneurship has to be managed.

But innovation, almost by definition, has to be decentralized, ad hoc, autonomous, specific, and micro-economic. It had better start small, tentative, flexible.

Indeed, the opportunities for innovation are found, on the whole, only way down and close to events.

They are not be found in the massive aggregates with which the planner deals of necessity, but in the deviations therefrom --- in the unexpected, in the incongruity, in the difference between "the glass is half full" and "the glass is half empty." In the weak link in a process.

By the time the deviation becomes "statistically significant" and thereby visible to the planner, it is too late. Innovative opportunities do not come with the tempest but with the rustling of the breeze...

It is popular today, especially in Europe, to believe that a country can have "high tech entrepreneurship" by itself... But it is a delusion.

Indeed a policy that promotes high tech and high tech alone ....and that otherwise is as hostile to entrepreneurship as France, West Germany and even England still are --- will not even produce high tech. All it can come up with is another expensive flop, another supersonic Concorde, a little gloire, oceans of red ink, but neither jobs nor technological leadership.

High tech in the first place -- that this is, of course, one of the major premises of this book, is only one area of innovation and entrepreneurship. The great bulk of innovations lies in other areas.

But also, a high-tech policy will run into political obstacles that will defeat it in short order. In terms of job creation, high tech is the maker of tomorrow rather than the maker of today... "high tech" in the United States created no more jobs in the period 1970 -85 than "smokestack" lost: about five to six million. All the additional jobs in the American economy during that period -- a total of 35 million ---- were created by new ventures that were not "high tech" but "middle tech," "low tech," or "no-tech."

Above all, to have "high tech" entrepreneurship alone without it being embedded in a broad entrepreneurial economy of "no-tech," "low-tech," and "middle tech" is like having a mountaintop without the mountain.

Even high-tech people in such a situation will not take jobs in a new, risky, high tech ventures. They will prefer the security a job in the large, established, "safe" company or in a government agency....

But the other innovative ventures are also needed to supply capital that high tech requires. Knowledge-based innovation, and in particualr high-tech innovation, has the longest lead time between investment and profitability. The world's computer industry did not break even unitl the late seventies, that is, after thirty loss years...

The French are right, of course: economic and political strength these days requires a high-tech position, whether in information technology, in biology, or in automation. The French surely have the scientific and technical capacity.

And yet it is most unlikely (I am tempted to say impossible) for any country to be innovative and entrepreneurial in high tech without having an entrepreneurial economy.

High tech is indeed the leading edge, but there cannot be an edge without a knife.

There cannot be a viable high tech sector by itself any more than there can be a healthy brain in a dead body.

There must be an economy full of innovators and entrepreneurs, with entrepreneurial vision and entrepreneurial values, with access to venture capital, and filled with entrepreneurial vigor."

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I am fascinated watching Albert's handiwork in driving Global Cleveland WHILE working so hard to protect his political brethren in CLE who believe that an influx of "lower-skilled" immigrants will: a.) take jobs away from African Americans; b.) will redefine what "minority" means in Cleveland; 3.) Will carve-up a political pie that is enjoyed exclusively by white and black politicians.

In watching the gymnastic turns and hamster wheel spins that GC and Albert perform, and the maze of interlocking non-profit "associations" that keeps everything afloat, I can't help but ask myself a few questions.

One, what would Albert's immigrant parents, who arrived in the U.S. from Poland without college degrees or overflowing bank accounts, say?

Two, if the lamp besides Cleveland's door is truly extinguished, then how did we get to this point? How could a recipe that worked for centuries, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," be so roundly rejected by a city so in need of new energy, fresh eyes, and the entrepreneurial burst of neighborhood startups?

"'Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she."