Could wealthy immigrants fix Detroit?

In an opinion piece published today Phil Power of the Center for Michigan floats the idea of revitalizing largely vacant Detroit by offering citizenship to any foreign millionaire willing to move to the city, start a business, and stay five years.

Homesteading is a great American tradition, he points out, and offering citizenship to wealthy foreigners worked as an economic development strategy for Vancouver, Canada.

In 1997 after the mainland Chinese government took over Hong Kong, he writes, Canada offered citizenship and a work permit to Hong Kong residents with more than $1 million in liquid assets.

The result? Thousands of wealthy Chinese immigrants transformed Vancouver into one of the most prosperous cities in North America.

There’s a clear lesson here for Detroit, now suffering population decline and the flight of an energetic and ambitious middle class: Let’s create a new urban homestead program. Offer anybody with $1 million in assets who wants to move to Detroit the possibility of citizenship. Bring your million; get your work permit; start a business; stay five years. Bingo! You’re an American citizen, participating in one of the most exciting urban redevelopment projects of our day.

Such a plan could build on the major role that immigrants already play in the economy of Detroit, he writes, because census data shows that immigrants in metropolitan areas hold a high proportion of white collar jobs.

The bottom line: There is no way a foreign-born immigrant with $1 million in assets is going to take away Detroit residents’ blue-collar jobs.

But if wealthy immigrants are welcomed to homestead and come and build businesses in Detroit, who’s going to get the new jobs they create? Detroit residents.