DETROIT – Richard Florida has written a sequel to his best seller, The Rise of the Creative Class. It is called, The Flight of the Creative Class. In this new book, he defines the biggest challenge to the US economy as the attraction and retention of creative talent in a world that is aggressively competing for that talent ? and succeeding at taking that talent from us.
Why should people in the security field care about this, you ask? Why should Michigan Infragard care? Not only because as you make hiring decisions you need to have access to the best talent available, regardless of originating country, but because the prevailing wisdom within government security circles is an increased restriction on immigration that is unprecedented in our country.
How else can the threat of terrorism be thwarted? How else can we deal with the threat of economic espionage? Countries that want our technology are sending people into this country to learn our technology to then return to implement it in their own. These are difficult issues to deal with. This is a dilemma that cannot be solved by government alone ? this is a problem that can only be solved by bringing private industry and government together to discuss the long range implications of policies and procedures created for our security and our economic stability ? and looking at both together.
If we are unable to look at both sides of this issue effectively, what terrorists and corporate pirates will have accomplished is what they do best ? they take a countries strength and turn it against their own citizens, using the resources of their enemy to inflict damage and fear. In our case, we will be harming our own economy by turning the energies of our federal law enforcement and immigration resources to create and enforce policies that reduce the inflow of the very life-blood of our economy ? foreign-born immigrants.
Today our government is tasked with coming up with a process that will allow the creative citizens of the world, seeking our open market economy and our premium on individual freedoms to come across our borders uncontested, while being able to correctly identify and restrict those that would enter our country to destroy it. That is a tough order to fill with the current state of our government, systems and communications between business and government.
As an executive with the largest chamber of commerce in the United States, I know that the H1-B visa issue is a big concern with our technology company members, and even with many non-technology companies. I also know that security concerns are big for a number of our other members that have large factories, large employee pools, infrastructure investments, and responsibility for hazardous materials. In some cases, personnel in the same company are on both sides of this issue. Making our borders more secure and at the same time opening our borders to the vast majority of foreign born people that want to come to this country to be productive citizens is not just the right thing to do ? it is critical to the success of our nation?s economy.
A few statistics that you should be aware of (courtesy of Florida?s new book) ? a large number of Fortune 100 companies in the US are run by foreign-born CEO?s. CEO?s of at least 50 of Americas leading 500 companies were born outside of the United States. Immigrants are even more prevalent in the entrepreneurial companies that power much of our economy today. During the 90?s foreign-born CEO?s ran 72 Inc. 500 companies, and immigrant entrepreneurs accounted for more than 30 percent of Silicon Valley startups during the 90?s. Foreign-born scientists and engineers make up huge percentages of our science and technology infrastructure.
Florida has coined a Global Creativity Index (GCI) that is based on his economic growth standards to measure competition nationally, and while we have a significant number of employees in what he terms ?creative? industries (tech and security are in these classifications) we are not the leader by percentage of workforce ? we currently rank fourth globally behind Sweden, Japan and Finland. If you don?t believe in Florida?s global rankings, you can get information from other studies that show how hot global economic competitiveness is getting. The Davos World Economic Forum 2004 Growth Competitiveness Index lists Finland first, the United States second, followed by Taiwan, Denmark and Norway.
What we have to understand from this information is that we cannot put up walls to protect ourselves from the terrorists of this world that would have us live in fear in our own country. What we must do is find solutions that work for both government and private industry that help us to retain our leadership in today?s global economy. This is my primary purpose for being involved with Michigan Infragard. Please let me know your thoughts on this topic, and if you would like to get involved, contact me for membership information.
To contact Erickson by email, click on [email protected]
