This document explores immigration as a strategic tool for economic recovery in Detroit. Facing massive population loss and bankruptcy, the city looks to immigrants to provide high-skilled human capital, counter an aging workforce, and foster global trade connections. Organizations like Global Detroit lead initiatives to retain international talent and support neighborhood entrepreneurship through programs like ProsperUS. However, significant challenges remain, such as attracting immigrants to the city center rather than the suburbs and improving municipal language access. Ultimately, the report highlights immigration's potential to catalyze urban renewal.

This report chronicles the important role that immigrants and other populations play as business owners in Metro Detroit. Immigrants in the region comprise more than one in four Main Street businesses and are critical to the health of our neighborhoods, retail districts, and downtowns across the region. Immigrant business owners create jobs in numerous sectors such as health, technology, construction, and manufacturing. This report articulates the need for public policies and programs to improve access to supporting the diverse and growing portion of business ownership in the region.

A practical companion to Global Detroit’s Contact Theory as a Tool for Social Cohesion report, designed to help practitioners, community-based organizations, and capacity-building organizations launch and manage social cohesion initiatives in diverse communities. Drawing from lessons learned through the Social Cohesion program pilot, the guide offers actionable strategies, tools, and implementation tips for applying Contact Theory in community development practice. Whether you are piloting a new initiative or strengthening an existing community-building effort, this guide provides practical insights to support the cultivation of trust, belonging, and collaboration across diverse communities.

The Strategic Talent Retention at Michigan’s Economic Crossroads report tracks the employment of international student graduates in Michigan from 2013-2022, the last decade for which the federal government has published data. This study tracks the use of the Optional Practical Training (OPT) portion of their student visas by international student graduates to work in Michigan. It is the first state study using this newly-available data and documents the 97,000 international students who worked in Michigan over this decade, including over 50,000 engineering graduates. The report suggests that Michigan should invest resources into the Global Talent Retention Initiative, the nation’s first and largest international student retention program outside a university.

This working research outlines the Social Cohesion Project, an initiative born from the insights of Global Detroit’s “Building Inclusive Cities” research. That study illuminated a fascinating duality within rapidly diversifying neighborhoods like East Davison Village and Banglatown. While increased immigration correlated with tangible improvements in quality of life – think the opening of new ethnic grocery stores enriching the local culinary scene, or the revitalization of previously underused commercial spaces. The research also pointed to nuanced challenges. Specifically, it highlighted perceptual differences emerging between newer, foreign-born residents and their long-term African American neighbors.

Lasting support for the economic power of robust immigration will only take root when local business leaders and institutions see their own futures as directly tied to federal immigration policy—and the full inclusion of immigrants in their state, regional, and local economic strategies. This guide is written to inspire and assist local immigrant-inclusive economic development practitioners, as well as immigration advocates, in developing and launching their own business and economic development-focused immigration narrative change campaigns. 

At the core of Global Detroit’s work to assist immigrant small business entrepreneurs in securing grants, loans and technical assistance is our “trusted connectors” program in which we pay local residents and community organizations to connect entrepreneurs in underserved communities to small business opportunities. This report documents the use of trusted connectors as a best practice for building access and inclusion into small business programs across the country, highlighting their use in several models. The report includes an analysis of the qualities and activities of effective trusted connectors, as well as potential metrics for evaluating their impacts. The report is designed to assist small business support organizations, microloan funds, philanthropic and corporate funders, economic development agencies and others seeking to expand access and equity in small business programs. We hope the report leads to a new network of trusted connectors programs and serves as inspiration to further research, promote and deploy this powerful practice.