Obama playing games with immigration – CNN.com.

San Diego, California (CNN) — In August 2005, as part of a public arts project, David Smith — aka “The Human Cannonball” — was fired out of a cannon across the border from Tijuana, Mexico, to San Diego. He was caught in a net 150 feet from the border, and he had his passport in hand just in case he had to show it to the U.S. Border Patrol.

For several years, that was considered the best show ever to visit the border. Not anymore.

This week, President Obama — who has already declared that he is running for re-election — kicked off his 2012 Latino outreach effort by traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border at El Paso, Texas, and delivering a speech on immigration.

This wasn’t easy. Finding the border can be tricky when it is your first visit in the 26 months since becoming president.

Besides, immigration isn’t Obama’s favorite topic. You remember that subject in high school that you hated, because, well, you had no interest in it and so you weren’t good at it?

For Barack Obama, that subject is immigration. He’s terrible at it. He doesn’t seem to understand it. And he doesn’t appear to care about it. So he settles for using it as a political tool.

There is a sizable community of immigrants — legal and illegal — in Illinois. Yet, during his stint in the state Senate, Obama demonstrated little interest in the issue and proposed no bills specifically aimed at immigrants.

When Obama ascended to the U.S. Senate, he voted for a so-called “poison pill” amendment to a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would “sunset” a proposed guest worker program after five years. All of this was to please organized labor, but it doomed the compromise.

After becoming president, Obama broke his promise to Latino voters to make immigration reform a top priority and address it early in his administration. Then he added injury to insult by racking up a record number of deportations — nearly 800,000 in his first two years in office. The Department of Homeland Security deports about 1,000 people a day.

We know this because, in a futile attempt to convince Obama’s critics that he’s tough on border security, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano brags about those figures in speeches and before Congress like a proud fisherman posing for a photo while holding the catch of the day.

And how do you get to the point where you’re deporting more illegal immigrants than any U.S. president since Dwight D. Eisenhower launched “Operation Wetback” in 1954? You use local police as a force multiplier, letting municipalities enforce immigration law and deliver to you the apprehended immigrants — while you’re suing the state of Arizona for doing the same thing.

All of which brings us to that speech on the border. This would have been a good opportunity to apologize for his administration’s excesses, and maybe announce a new policy that — while still tough — is fairer and more humane.

But that’s not Obama’s style. He approaches a speech like this as an opportunity to make himself look good and his opponents look bad. Some of the content was terrific; some was farcical. Overall, the president’s speech was menudo (Mexican stew). It had a little of everything mixed in.

On the positive side, you had uplifting stories like that of Dr. Jose Hernandez, the son of immigrant farm workers, who grew up picking vegetables in Central California and became an astronaut. There was common sense about how idiotic it is for our country to educate foreign students, then send them home because we make it so difficult for them to stay. There was the heartwarming assurance that people could be proud of their heritage and still love the United States of America.

But, on the negative side, this was a political speech. And so it was full of deceptions and half-truths, finger-pointing and the ducking of responsibility.

We learned that it was Republicans who demanded the building of border fencing. (True, but Obama left out the part about how he voted for it in the Senate.)

We learned that, while in the Senate, Obama helped forge “a bipartisan coalition” to advance immigration reform. (Actually, Obama undermined that coalition when he helped torpedo immigration reform.)

We learned that Republicans killed the DREAM Act. (They didn’t. Five Senate Democrats did — Jon Tester, Max Baucus, Mark Pryor, Kay Hagan, and Ben Nelson — when they bolted from party leaders and voted against cloture.)

We learned that the administration focuses on deporting “criminal aliens.” (It’s true that — through initiatives like Secure Communities, a cooperative agreement between local law enforcement and federal immigration officials — the number of criminal aliens being deported is way up from the previous administration. But even so, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the total number of criminal aliens apprehended is less than 200,000. That still leaves hundreds of thousands of “noncriminal” deportations. In fact, Obama admitted in his remarks that those subject to removal include “families that are just trying to earn a living or bright, eager students or decent people with the best of intentions.”)

And finally, we learned that Obama thinks the United States shouldn’t be “in the business of separating families.” (Guess what? That is exactly the business we’re in. The Obama administration, for purely political reasons, separates hundreds of families every day.)

Are we done now? Enough gamesmanship, Mr. President. How about some leadership? You’ve shown you can get out in front of issues you care about. Try caring more about this one.

President Obama went to the border this week to share his usual campaign message of hope and change. He wound up spreading fertilizer.

Obama Pressures GOP on Immigration – WSJ.com.

EL PASO, Texas—President Barack Obama on Tuesday tried a new tack on immigration, saying that beefed-up security along the U.S.-Mexico border has proved effective enough that it should draw Republican support for an overhaul of the nation’s naturalization system.

Mr. Obama said his administration had met the concerns of Republicans by increasing law-enforcement manpower to record levels and installing new surveillance technology and fencing.

“We have strengthened border security beyond what many believed was possible,” he said at the Chamizal National Memorial, as a giant Mexican flag waved across the Rio Grande river.

The president cited several statistics to back up his assertion of tightened borders, including a nearly 40% decrease in arrests at the border, to about 463,000 in 2010. The administration says that is a sign that fewer people are attempting to illegally cross from Mexico.

Mr. Obama didn’t mention that deportations hit record levels last year—a trend that has drawn fire from some Hispanic advocates.

The speech was aimed in part at reassuring voters who are worried about border security, and in part at renewing support among Hispanic voters he needs to boost his re-election campaign, particularly in Rocky Mountain states.

He offered no new policy proposals Tuesday, and set no timetable for legislation. Instead, he called for those who support his proposals to build pressure for congressional action from outside Washington.

The president said the new border-control measures will prevent another wave of illegal immigrants from flowing into the country if those already here are allowed to stay.

Some prominent unions including the AFL-CIO have opposed immigration legislation in the past, concerned that new arrivals would pose competition for their members. Senators trying to craft an overhaul have said one of the obstacles has been coming up with a guest-worker program unions and business can support.

Mr. Obama’s legislative goals haven’t changed since he spoke on immigration last summer, including a path to citizenship for the 10.8 million people already in the U.S. illegally, a program many Republicans oppose as a reward for lawbreaking. Mr. Obama also supports a guest-worker program and making it easier for foreign students educated in the U.S. to stay.

There is virtually no GOP support in Congress for the legislation Mr. Obama wants, though some Republicans have embraced these ideas in the past.

Mr. Obama predicted that no matter what he does, some Republican foes of his approach will demand more. “Maybe they’ll need a moat,” he said. “Maybe they’ll want alligators in the moat.”

Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl have crafted a $4 billion, 10-point plan that calls for double fencing where there is now single fencing and another 5,000 Border Patrol agents, on top of the 20,700 now in place.

“We hear from our constituents on a daily basis, and, while some progress has been made in some areas, they do not believe the border is secure,” Messrs. McCain and Kyl said in a statement Tuesday.

They also pointed to a Government Accountability Office report that found the U.S. has “operational control” of 44% of the Southwest border with Mexico, meaning it has the ability to detect, respond and interdict illegal activity.The administration says that isn’t a good measure and officials are working on a better one.

Republicans face pressure within their party to keep the focus on tougher immigration enforcement. But some GOP leaders say the party also needs to improve its standing with Hispanics, the fastest-growing voter group in the U.S.

But the president faces skepticism even from supporters heading into this latest push.

“The moment to use pressure is gone. You missed it. The train left the station,” said Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.). “I want to be honest with my constituents and with the American people. I don’t want to rev them up for something that doesn’t have any possibilities of success.”

Obama renews call for immigration reform – CNN.com.

Washington (CNN) — President Barack Obama renewed his call for comprehensive immigration reform Tuesday, citing America’s legacy as a nation of immigrants and calling the need to find a solution for the millions of undocumented workers critical to the country’s common future.

“We define ourselves as a nation of immigrants — a nation that welcomes those willing to embrace America’s precepts,” Obama said during a visit to El Paso, Texas.

“It doesn’t matter where you come from. What matters is that you believe in the ideals on which we were founded, that you believe all of us are equal. …. In embracing America, you can become American. That is what makes this country great.”

The president’s remarks were part of an administration attempt to seize the initiative on a hot-button issue that has largely been ceded to state government leaders in recent months.

The speech took place against a backdrop of intense political maneuvering on the part of both Democrats and Republicans seeking to use the issue to their own advantage in the 2012 election campaign.

Obama has held a series of meetings with key Latino officials and reform advocates in recent weeks. Despite an aggressive push for substantive policy changes from his political base, the president indicated he has ruled out acting on his own to implement provisions of a reform bill that failed to win congressional approval last year.

At the same time, however, the president also signaled a shift in federal priorities. While continuing to highlight tougher border enforcement measures to national audiences, Obama noted during a recent Univision appearance that he has “redesigned our enforcement practices under the law to make sure that we’re focusing primarily on criminals.”

The deportation of non-criminals is declining “because we want to focus our resources on those folks who are destructive to the community,” he said.

A number of states — most notably Arizona — are moving in the opposite direction, pushing legislation making it easier to deport people solely for being in the country illegally.

Broad immigration reform “remains a priority” for the administration, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday. There has been bipartisan support for reform in the past, he noted, and “we think we can build support for it again in the future.”

The issue requires “focus,” “education,” and “persistence,” Carney said. “The sooner it gets done, the better for the country.”

El Paso Mayor John Cook told CNN he hopes to see a stronger push for more agents at border crossing points.

Obama has “already done a lot of work” to put “additional boots on the ground” along the border, Cook said Tuesday. But the number of customs agents near El Paso has remained the same since 2005 while the overall volume of trade with Mexico has risen substantially, he noted.

In terms of more extensive immigration reform, Cook said there “doesn’t have to be a pathway to citizenship” for undocumented immigrants. There should, however, be at least “a pathway to legalization.”

Let’s “get these folks — (roughly) 12 million people — out of the shadows,” he said. “Get them to come out and have their place in the United States be legal.”

Republican leaders have indicated an unwillingness to consider broader changes — including a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants — until the Mexican border is brought under tighter control.

Conservative frustration has boiled over in recent months in the form of a rash of state-level proposals to apprehend and deport illegal immigrants. Key parts of an Arizona law requiring police officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other statutes were recently blocked by the federal courts.

The Justice Department sued Arizona, arguing that only the federal government has the authority to dictate immigration policy. Federal district and appellate judges have blocked that provision of the law, and the state asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case Monday.

Progressive reform advocates, meanwhile, have been frustrated by Congress’s inability to pass the DREAM Act, which would offer legal standing to immigrants who entered the United States illegally as children under the age of 16 and have lived in the country for at least five years.

Obama said Tuesday he would keep pushing for passage of the measure.

The bill would require, among other things, a high school or General Education Development diploma, two years of college or military service, and criminal background checks.

Advocates say the bill would give legal standing to young people brought to the United States by their parents who have bettered themselves and served their new country.

One Latino advocacy group — Presente.org — released a statement Tuesday blasting Obama for failing to issue an executive order stopping the deportation of young undocumented immigrants until legislation such as the DREAM Act is passed.

“All we have heard from President Obama are empty speeches,” the statement said.

Republican opponents equate the measure to amnesty, and have said it would signal to the world that the United States is not serious about enforcing its laws or its borders. They have also called the bill unfair to immigrants who, in many cases, waited years to come to the country legally.

“The president will have to present a plan that takes amnesty off the table and focuses, instead, on making a real commitment to border and interior security,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said Tuesday morning.

“If the president does these two things, he will find strong bipartisan support. If he doesn’t, he won’t.”

The DREAM Act was defeated by a Republican filibuster in the Senate last December after winning passage in the House of Representatives. Most analysts believe it has little chance of clearing the GOP-controlled House now.

Regardless, the immigration issue remains politically potent. Obama won several Western states in 2008 — including Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada — partly on the rising power of the Latino vote. Democrats believe Hispanic voters might put traditionally Republican Arizona in play next year.

In the long run, Democrats are also hoping to use their advantage among Hispanics to make inroads in core GOP states such as Texas.

Obama won over two-thirds of the nationwide Hispanic vote in 2008. His approval rating among Hispanics hovered around 68 percent during the first three months of this year, according to the most recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation polls.

For their part, Republicans have depended on the immigration issue in the past to fire up conservative voters. Some analysts also believe that if Democrats push too hard, too fast on immigration, particularly in tough economic times, it could push swing voters toward the GOP.

Obama assembles all-star cast to talk immigration – Yahoo! News.

Obama seeks Latino stars’ help on immigration – The Boston Globe.

Obama Renews Call for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

When President Obama hosted a meeting on April 19 with prominent stakeholders in the immigration debate, he hoped to kick start a national dialogue about how to push comprehensive immigration reform forward. The timing was symbolic—the Arizona state legislature voted one year ago to take immigration enforcement into its own hands, butting heads with the Obama administration and polarizing the immigration debate. Obama laid out his own four-point plan that includes ramping up border security; holding businesses that contract undocumented workers accountable; establishing a pathway to citizenship in which undocumented immigrants would admit they broke the law, pay a fine, and go to the back of the line; and reforming the current legal immigration system to make it more efficient and focus on recruiting skilled and entrepreneurial foreigners. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to achieve a system that is fair, is equitable, is an economic engine for America that helps the people who are already here get acculturated, and make sure that our laws aren’t being broken but we’re still true to our traditions,” Obama said in a Facebook-hosted, town-hall meeting on April 20.

Obama’s support for immigration reform serves as something of a “thank you” to Latino constituents who support both Obama and the Democratic Party in large numbers. Some 67 percent of the country’s 10 million Hispanic voters cast their ballots for Obama in the 2008 presidential elections. The record-level support—a 14 percent jump from what John Kerry received in the 2004 election—boosted Obama’s standing in the hard-won states of Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Florida. Hispanic support for the Democratic Party remained strong in the midterms, with 60 percent voting for Democratic candidates versus 38 percent for the Republicans, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Hispanic support for Obama does not come unconditionally, however, as Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) recently reminded the president. Gutierrez went on a tour this month to raise support for immigration reform and said he wanted to see more action from the president on immigration reform before deciding if he would support his candidacy. Gutierrez took Obama to task for deporting more people than any U.S. president, with nearly 393,000 deportations in 2009 (the last year for which official figures are available). The expansion of Secure Communities, a program requiring local police to share fingerprints of those they apprehend with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), also angers many Hispanic leaders. Data recently released by ICE show that almost half of those pulled into deportation proceedings through Secure Communities either committed misdemeanors or no crime at all, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Obama also reiterated his support of the DREAM Act in recent days, a reform that would allow most undocumented youths without criminal records to attend university, join the military, and apply for citizenship. But reform advocates point out that the president has the power to halt deportations of youth without waiting for Congress. Twenty-two senators wrote Obama an open letter on April 13 asking him to use executive authority to create a system to defer deportation for those who would qualify for the DREAM Act if it were law.

Pressure notwithstanding, Obama said repeatedly last week that he would not fight for immigration reform alone. He expects Congress to lead the way, but comprehensive immigration reform will not be easy for Obama to sell this year. Democrats are not united behind immigration reform and some Republicans who entered Congress after midterms gained votes by taking tough stances against illegal immigration and calling for increased border enforcement. The polarization stemming from Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB 1070, makes cobbling together a bipartisan coalition more difficult. Congress has not been able to pass the DREAM Act. But when the DREAM Act failed in the Senate last year, only three Republican voted for it, compared to the 22 who supported the bipartisan 2006 immigration reform introduced by John McCain (R-AZ) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA) that included the DREAM Act.

At the same time, some Republicans hope to take advantage of the growing Hispanic vote. Politico reports that Newt Gingrich, for example, has begun learning Spanish and reaching out to the Hispanic community. Though he remains opposed to granting a pathway to citizenship for most of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, he favors allowing the undocumented to apply for residency. “We are not going to deport 11 million people,” Gingrich said at a forum with Latino leaders in December. “There has to be some zone between deportation and amnesty.”

Immigration Pressure on Obama Intensifies – NYTimes.com.

With prospects for an immigration overhaul looking dim, President Obama is facing increasing pressure from Latinos, Democratic lawmakers and immigrant groups to use his executive powers to offer relief from deportation to broad groups of illegal immigrants.

Latinos and Democrats praised Mr. Obama for trying to jump-start efforts to pass the bill, which would grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. But with many leaders of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives strongly opposed to the measure, the bill’s supporters remain skeptical that it will go anywhere before the presidential election next year.

They are calling on Mr. Obama to use authorities they say he already has under current immigration law to defer deportations of illegal immigrant students who would be eligible for legal status under a bill known as the Dream Act.

“We know that immigration reform is doable, but it is just rather difficult given the makeup of Congress,” said Representative Charlie Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas, who is chairman of the Hispanic Caucus in the House. “We are asking the president if he could provide some sort of relief to innocent people who are the most impacted by the inequities of the immigration system.”

Religious and civil rights groups have asked Mr. Obama to expand waivers that would make it easier for illegal immigrants who are immediate relatives of American citizens to fix their legal status without having to leave the United States.

Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and 11 other lawmakers sent a letter asking the Obama administration to postpone deportations of immigrants in same-sex marriages with American citizens. The administration recently decided that it would no longer defend in the courts a law barring the federal government from recognizing those marriages.

Some Hispanic lawmakers, in the most ambitious demands, have said the president should halt deportations of illegal immigrants whose children are American citizens. An estimated four million young citizens have at least one parent who is an illegal immigrant.

Democrats are leaning on the White House as they look to the elections next year, when Latino voters could play pivotal roles in several crucial states. Under the Obama administration, immigration authorities have carried out record numbers of deportations, with nearly 400,000 immigrants removed in each of the last two years. The deportations are drawing increasingly irate protests from Latino communities.

But Republicans in Congress say the administration has not done enough to remove illegal immigrants, and they oppose any action by Mr. Obama that would offer what they call a “stealth amnesty.”

Mr. Obama “should not selectively enforce the law,” said Elton Gallegly, Republican of California, who is chairman of the House Judiciary immigration subcommittee. “Amnesty — whether universal or selective — only encourages illegal immigration.”

Administration officials said Mr. Obama had rejected any move that would appear to circumvent Congress, which could alienate the handful of Republicans who might be persuaded to join an effort to pass the overhaul legislation. The president told the White House meeting on Tuesday that he did not believe there were any shortcuts he could use to help illegal immigrants.

“At the end of the day, the president cannot fix administratively what is broken in the immigration system,” said a senior White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue. The official said the White House had made a strategic decision to focus all its efforts on passing the overhaul rather than acting unilaterally to make smaller changes.

Mr. Obama first rejected executive action to suspend deportations during a town-hall-style meeting broadcast in late March on Univision, the Spanish-language television network.

But calls for him to change his mind have only multiplied since then. In a letter on April 13, the top two Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, and 20 other Democrats sent a letter asking the president to defer deportations of illegal immigrant students. The Dream Act bill passed the House but failed in the Senate last year.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, denounced the Democrats’ letter in a speech on the floor. “I’m just appalled that members of this body think an executive order to grant amnesty behind our backs is not an assault on the democratic process,” Mr. Grassley said.

Acting case by case, the immigration authorities suspended deportations of 34,448 immigrants last year, according to figures sent to Mr. Grassley by the Department of Homeland Security.

Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, a critic of the administration on immigration, is touring the country holding town-hall-style meetings in Latino communities to demand the suspension of deportation for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.

Michael Moritz: Immigration Lessons From English Soccer – WSJ.com.

Here in Silicon Valley, immigrants and first-generation Americans provide the drive and hunger for almost every company worth its salt. But these days protectionism and xenophobia are choking off the supply of H1-B visas for the best and brightest foreigners. Sadly, we no longer lay out the welcome mat for people with names like Grove, Brin, Yang, Bechtolsheim, Huang, Nguyen, Omidyar and Wadhwani.

Some say that the effect of immigrants on Silicon Valley is exaggerated and that venture capitalists should provide more opportunities for homegrown Californians. But the state’s xenophobes and protectionists need only take a look at the recent history of the English Premier League to see the staggering and transformative effect that immigrants can have on a market.

Twenty years ago, English professional soccer was in a shambles. Most of the stadiums had just a few seats. Stabbings and fights on the terraces were part of the entertainment. In 1989, 96 people were trampled to death during one tragic game. Almost all the players in the league had been born in England—many within sight of the stadiums in which they played. Clubs in Italy, Spain, Brazil and Argentina provided a more scintillating version of the sport. Revenues from television coverage were small. In less than two decades all that has changed, and today the best soccer in the world is played in England. The reason: immigrants.

The English Premier League is a testament to what happens when immigration barriers are broken down and a market attracts the most talented people from around the world.

In 1992, the year of its formation, there were only 11 soccer players in the English Premier League who had not been born in the United Kingdom or Ireland. Now that number is more than 250—in a league where the total number of players in the overall starting lineup is 220. In 1999, Chelsea became the first team to field a Premier League starting lineup composed entirely of foreign-born players.

The main reason behind this dramatic change was a labor ruling in 1995 by the European Court of Justice. The court ruled that arcane rules restricting the free movement of soccer players were in breach of the law of the European Union. When the rules were lifted, the English Premier League was flooded with the best players in the world.

The economic result of the influx of talented immigrants has been profound. Today the soccer on view in the English Premier League is far and away the most attractive in the world. The domestic market has expanded—hooliganism is in decline, and women and children flock to stadiums on Saturdays. Meanwhile, the export market is more lucrative than ever. More than half a billion people in some 200 countries follow the exploits of Chelsea, Manchester United, Aston Villa, Blackpool and Tottenham Hotspur. A preseason tour of Asia has become de rigueur for the best clubs.

The league has also drawn foreign capital with club owners from the United States, India, Russia and the Middle East. Only three sports leagues—the NFL, MLB and NBA—top the English Premier League in revenues. But these leagues, it should be noted, compete in a domestic market six-times larger than England’s.

In 1986, a two-year TV agreement for the top flight of English soccer was sold for 6.3 million pounds, the equivalent of about $10 million today. In 2007, a set of three-year rights was sold for 1.7 billion pounds, or $2.7 billion. It’s little wonder that last year the English Premier League won the Queen’s award for enterprise in international trade.

Players like Chelsea’s Didier Drogba (Ivory Coast), Arsenal’s Cesc Fabregas (Spain), and Manchester United’s Nemanja Vidic (Serbia) may not possess the technical chops to start technology companies in Silicon Valley. But they answered the same clarion call that rang out to the founders and families that once spawned Intel, eBay, Google, Nvidia, Yahoo and hundreds of other companies formed between San Jose and San Francisco. These soccer players are living proof that the best people score the most goals.

Turning away talent—wherever it’s from—only weakens the market and brings down everyone’s game.

Why Minority Entrepreneurs Matter In America – Forbes.com.

When Fidel Castro seized his cattle ranches in 1966, Domingo Diaz fled to Atlanta, where he scraped together a living mopping floors as a janitor. Eventually he saved enough to buy a grocery store downtown, where he and his son, Julio, sold Cuban specialties. Over the next decade they added four more stores. It was a family affair: Julio’s son, Rene, learned math running the checkout counter, and at age 15 he learned to drive (and haggle) by going to the market to buy produce to stock the shelves.

Today Rene Diaz runs Diaz Foods, which generates $200 million in sales transporting mostly Hispanic food products to restaurants and grocery stores in 25 states. The Diaz family now includes 370 employees representing “every single Latin country,” crows Rene Diaz, 49. “At least ten couples have met here, gotten married and stayed at Diaz Foods. And I can’t even count how many family members work here.”

Minority entrepreneurs like Diaz are playing a bigger role in America’s growth story. In 2010 immigrants accounted for nearly 30% of new business owners, versus 13% in 1996, according to the Kauffman Foundation. Atlanta, with its sprawling suburbs and endless strip malls, is an especially active hive.

Since the 1980s Atlanta’s Hispanic population has swelled, drawn from recession-wracked places like Texas and California. The 1996 Summer Olympics brought more construction and service jobs to the city. In the last decade the city, where half the residents are African American, has attracted a host of Hispanic and Asian entrepreneurs, and now boasts the second-highest percentage of self-employed minorities among the top 52 metropolitan areas with populations greater than 1 million. That–combined with a growing population, increasing household incomes and affordable housing–puts Atlanta atop our list of best metro areas for minority entrepreneurs, cobbled together with help from economist-demographer Joel Kotkin, author of The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050.

Diaz’s market is vast–and expanding. Between 2000 and 2009 disposable income among U.S. Hispanics grew at an 8% clip, to nearly $1 trillion, versus 4.7% growth in overall GDP. Better yet, “Hispanics tend to buy from Hispanics,” says Luz Urrutia, president of El Banco de Nuestra Comunidad in Atlanta. Diaz has spent $250,000 on software to track purchasing trends and fields a team of six analysts to research new products appealing to a variety of cultures.

Mexicans, for example, tend to be brand loyalists, says Diaz. That’s why he struck an exclusive deal with Jarritos, a Mexican soda company, in 2008, which helped shore up sales in the latest downturn. “We were able to land customers who weren’t buying from us before,” says Liliana Bejarano, Diaz Foods’ vice president of business intelligence. The company now stocks seven different nectars, three of them (Sonrisa, Jumex and Boing) for customers hailing from different parts of Mexico. Diaz also ships five kinds of black beans. “They’re the same black beans,” he says. “But Hispanics want their black beans.” (Colombians, on the other hand, couldn’t care less about labels. “If a Colombian company says they have the most famous rice, I’ll say: ‘What’s the price?’” quips Bejarano, who formerly worked for McKinsey in Colombia.)

Twenty years ago Diaz Foods had a tiny $25,000 line of credit. Each morning Diaz would call his local bank to find out how much his account was overdrawn and then ask his drivers to pick up money from customers and deposit cash somewhere along the route. Today that line is $11 million.

Diaz still lives on low-single-digit operating margins–an even tougher game when commodity prices spike. In the last few months gasoline jumped $1 to nearly $4 a gallon, adding $25,000 more to Diaz’s fuel bill every week. “We need to get more penetration into existing customers rather than knocking on doors of new ones,” he says.

More nettlesome, Georgia has become a battleground for immigration reform. One bill, put forth by Representative Matt Ramsey (R-Ga.), would force companies to use a federal database to confirm an employee’s eligibility and also would allow police officers to ask for proof of citizenship during traffic stops.

Diaz says all his workers are legit and that most endure background checks. “There might be someone here who has fake paperwork,” admits CFO Eric Newberg, “but we can’t do anything more than follow the laws.” For extra measure last year Diaz hired a firm to conduct an I-9 employee-eligibility audit, just the second such review in the company’s history.

Visit Diaz’s 250,000-square-foot warehouse just west of downtown Atlanta and the beaming owner can barely contain his pride. Latin American artwork adorns the walls. Diaz’s employees have health insurance, access to an onsite gym (with yoga and Zumba classes), a 401(k) plan with matching contributions and subsidized lunch spreads five days a week, including strip steaks, paella and plantains.

Diaz insists relatives don’t get special treatment at the company. Nor, he adds, does he intend to walk away from what his grandfather started anytime soon: “I don’t run it like a family business, but I always want it to be a privately held business with family values.”

American Universities Have Major Stake in Immigration Reform, Speaker Says – International – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

February 22, 2011

American Universities Have Major Stake in Immigration Reform, Speaker Says

By Karin Fischer

San Francisco

If the United States doesn’t reform its immigration system, it risks a vast “brain hemorrhage,” as American-educated Indian and Chinese engineers and entrepreneurs return to their own countries, the scholar and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa said in a provocative speech on Tuesday at the annual meeting here of the Association of International Education Administrators. And American universities have much at stake in reform, he said.

Mr. Wadhwa, who holds appointments at Duke University, Harvard Law School, and the University of California at Berkeley, said the United States was squandering the competitive edge of its higher-education system by allowing one million highly educated immigrants to linger in immigration limbo because of tight caps on visas. And that outmigration could eventually affect American universities, rendering them “obsolete,” he said.

“The United States is headed for massive reverse brain drain,” said Mr. Wadhwa, who is also a columnist for Business Week and an adviser to a number of startup companies.

“The outflow is happening too fast to be good for the United States,” he said. “It’s happening too much too fast.”

America’s innovation economy, Mr. Wadhwa pointed out, owes much to imported talent. A quarter of all patent applications filed in this country are the work of foreign nationals.

From 1995 to 2005, 25 percent of all startup companies had at least one immigrant founder. The number was even higher among new high-tech enterprises—in Silicon Valley, more than half of all companies were started by immigrants. A disproportionate number of startups were founded by immigrants from India, he added.

But current U.S. immigration policy is hostile to those very entrepreneurs, Mr. Wadhwa said. Each year the United States issues only 65,000 H1-B visas, which allow international workers in certain high-tech and specialty fields to be employed in this country, and the federal government tightly caps the number of green cards granted annually to immigrants from individual countries. More than one million foreigners now in the United States are waiting for one of 120,000 permanent-resident visas issued annually to skilled workers.

As a consequence, he said, young and well-educated workers from abroad must return to their home countries. The average age of Indians now returning home from America is 30, and Chinese returnees are, on average, 33.

‘Get Out of Their Shells’

American universities are helping fuel the roaring economies overseas, particularly in India, which does not even produce enough engineering doctorates to staff its own universities.

What’s more, many international students increasingly believe that the “grass is indeed greener back home,” Mr. Wadhwa said.

Just a few years ago, Mr. Wadhwa said, when he would ask his international students at Duke whether they wanted to stay permanently in the United States, most said they did. Today, he said, most plan to work in this country for just a few years and then return home.

As part of his research, Mr. Wadhwa used Facebook to poll foreign students at American universities: Fewer than 10 percent of Chinese students and just 6 percent of Indian students surveyed said they wanted to permanently emigrate to the United States.

Given those trends, Mr. Wadhwa said, a decade from now it’s unlikely that 50 percent of all companies will have immigrant founders, a trend that could pose serious consequences for American competitiveness and innovation.

“We’re getting more xenophobic, anti-immigrant, just when we need them,” he said of American policy and political rhetoric.

Mr. Wadhwa also dismissed as “garbage” American academic studies that suggest such competitiveness concerns are overblown.

American universities, Mr. Wadhwa said, have to “get out of their shells” and become greater advocates for immigration reform. Otherwise, they risk becoming “obsolete.”

As more well-educated Chinese and Indian nationals opt to return or remain in their home countries, he said, the quality of universities there will improve, making them more competitive on a world stage.

Over the next decade “Silicon Valley-class universities” will develop in those countries, Mr. Wadhwa said. “American students will want to go there—we’ll be left out.”