Immigrants can help revitalize distressed Detroit

LANSING, Mich. – An influx of 16,000 immigrant Latinos big enough to prompt the opening of 17 taquerias in five years has spared southwest Detroit from the city's downward spiral.

In and around Hamtramck, a 2-square-mile enclave surrounded by the city, almost 10,000 immigrants from Bangladesh and Yemen bolster the economy of a town once known for its Polish heritage. A few miles away, Chaldeans who once thronged north Detroit want to revive their presence there with housing for refugees fleeing the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant in their homeland of Iraq.

"I'm not sure many other people would take the chance that I took," said Bangladesh native Khurshed Ahmed, 32, a naturalized citizen who five years ago opened a restaurant to tap the local market of Muslims craving halal pizza.

While debate rages in Washington over immigration, the Motor City and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, want to attract foreign-born settlers to move past a record bankruptcy and repopulate the landscape. Foreign-born professionals, business owners and refugees have helped sustain Detroit through the loss of two-thirds of its population since 1950.

Snyder has asked President Obama to issue 50,000 visas over five years to high-skill and entrepreneurial immigrants who agree to live in Detroit. The city this year created a task force to assist the foreign-born.

"People are already moving to the city," council member Raquel Castaneda-Lopez said. "It's a question of how you streamline the process."

The 18th-largest U.S. city ranks 135th in the number of foreign-born residents, said Steve Tobocman, director of Global Detroit, a nonprofit that promotes immigration as an economic catalyst.

Detroit has about 35,000 foreign-born residents out of an estimated 688,000, according to Global Detroit. In the metropolitan region, two-thirds own their homes and about half have become citizens.

Those who live in the city find housing bargains. The median sales price of Detroit homes in October was $18,000. That compares with $145,000 for the metropolitan area.

Southwest Detroit is the most notable example of vitality, with its contingent of immigrants and about 30,000 U.S.-born Latinos. As the city struggled to replace broken streetlights, a neighborhood business group mustered $6.4 million in grants to replace them and spruce up its main street, Vernor Highway.

Around the Hamtramck border, dozens of businesses, many immigrant-owned, contrast with blighted and abandoned buildings that scar neighborhoods nearby.

Foreign-born residents tend to be younger, more educated and more likely to start businesses than Michigan's general population, Tobocman said.

Detroit needs numbers. Its population fell from 1.8 million in 1950, according to the Census Bureau. That's left swaths of the city abandoned, blight-ridden and poor. By 2012, the property-tax base, adjusted for inflation, had fallen to 21 percent of its 1950s value.

"Solid economic evidence suggests that immigrants disproportionately contribute to economic growth, employment and wage gains — including for local African-American populations," according to a 2010 Global Detroit report.

Groups that help Chaldean refugees want to buoy Detroit's north side, where members of the Christian sect first settled in the 1960s. The Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce has plans for a Detroit "village" that includes housing for those fleeing militants in Iraq and Syria.

Detroit leaders are receptive and the project is seeking investors and state and city approval, said Martin Manna, chamber president. Manna said 90 percent of the city's Chaldeans have moved out since 2003, though members still own most convenience and liquor stores. About 30,000 Chaldean refugees have fled to Michigan since 2007, Manna said.

"Imagine if we could repopulate the city," he said. "But the challenges are enormous for security and schools."