The 11/16/04 Tuesday@REI session surfaced one of the most serious problems
being confronting by America, our region, and Case today - the fact foreigners
are not interested to visit, work, and study in America at levels seen in the
past. This is in fact a reason for the most pressing and escalating outsourcing
issues surfacing today, that American knowledge-based jobs and important
innovations are being realized in foreign regions having greater talent than
here - its not just about cheap labor. The issue is best framed in a posting
from an ingenious English programmer I know, now living in central Brazil...
"the US is loosing out on "creative class" talent
because we foreigners don't want to go live there. (I have to say, I've never
met a smart, interesting person who wanted to emigrate to the US, though plenty
of my friends are talking about going to Canada.)

Experts on these concerns convened at REI to analyze the issue and
opportunities for improvement. There is no doubt statistics prove international
student enrollments in American universities are down, and it is common
knowledge that a huge percentage of the highest level students at America's universities
are predominantly foreign-born, especially in the sciences, mathematics and
even healthcare. We must have a strong inflow of the best and brightest foreign
talent for America to remain innovative and economically competitive. For
example, consider a large percentage of patents awarded in the US are filed by
foreign born inventors and researchers - without the inflow of these people,
our nation is at a catastrophic global disadvantage.

Americans often seem to forget that America as we know it is entirely the
product of immigration, considering that everyone here came from elsewhere,
starting around 50,000 years ago, with the predominant inflow of our current
population having just started around 500 years ago - we are all foreigners and
for the most part recent immigrants. It is now absurd to take a protectionist
and isolationist position that is in denial of our foundation as a nation -
never forget that the inventiveness of the American nation has been achieved
entirely through internationalization.

What has changed recently, to make America less attractive to foreign
students and professionals, is that American national foreign policies have
become hostile - "we" are in global conflicts and we are anti-internationalization.
Thus, the world has a negative impression of our global policies and to a great
extent our culture, and the reality is coming to America is dangerous for
foreigners - it is difficult for students, their families and workers to obtain
travel and work visas, and here they have no civil rights or access to due
process - they can literally be detained and deported without notice, cause or
recourse. It is understandable that under such circumstances foreigners will
avoid our country - especially those who are positioned to be accepted in the
best universities and job openings in the world. Considering America represents
a small fraction of the global population, and inventiveness is evenly
distributed around the world, to close our doors to "outsiders" is to
lose out on access to most of the world's innovativeness, not to mention the
best of world art, music, culture, love and goodness.

Do "we" care? In many cases, in many places in America, the
popular culture is now decidedly against internationalization and foreign
students and workers. REI Director Ed Morrison pointed the attendees of this
session to a slide about recent city of Detroit efforts to create an
African-American-exclusive economic development policy that was justified by
the position foreigners take away local jobs, and it seems nation-wide there is
a perception globalization is evil - whether by justification it allows
terrorists to harm Americans or disrupt our happy economic home. Such thinking
is ignorant, but pervasive, just as other forms of racism have scarred all our
people over the generations. Can we combat such ignorance?... We absolutely must,
for the survival of our country.

The conclusion of the REI session on this subject determined leaders of this
region have a need to address this issue, and an opportunity to make a
difference in this aspect of our economy... I suggest this national crisis actually
offers us the opportunity to develop unique competitive advantages right now,
for NEO. If we may make foreigners feel more comfortable and welcome here than
in the rest of the country, and our world-class organizations do an effective
job marketing their enthusiasm for global outreach, we stand to gain a larger
share of the inflow of excellent immigrants, students and workers who continue
to come in from abroad, and we will be even more so fortunate as policies
eventually shift to improve the global outlook toward our nation - NEO stands to
be a big winner in this global playing field, positioning us to have a more
exceptional workforce than other regions, in the long run. Thus, we will
improve our economy and the overall quality of life for everyone living in NEO
for generations to follow.

To seize these advantages, our first responsibility is to make all recent
immigrants and visiting foreigners feel as welcome, comfortable and supported
here as is possible - protect them from racism and expose them to every
opportunity afforded them and others in our community... encourage as many of
them as possible to make NEO their home. To do that, we must educate the
masses, including all community leaders.

We need an aggressive public relations campaign against racism at home - all
forms of racism. And we must better leverage our international relations
leaders to better communicate the role of foreigners in our economy, and
proactively market our region across the globe. Our World Trade Center, foreign
consuls, and international social and trade organizations and all international
families must be encouraged to celebrate all aspects of their cultures and our
diversity here, and share the celebration in the distant lands to which they
are connected. Thus, 100,000s of people of NEO must become our dignitaries for improved
foreign relations world-wide.

We must also become inventive in how we approach international relations,
establishing global scholarship programs, many sister city relations,
co-development projects, and even trade and tourism missions. All this offers
exciting opportunities for people here to participate in other cultures, see
other lands, and share business opportunities around the globe. And the leaders
of these effort should be recognized and celebrated as the exceptional
dignitaries they are or shall become. Determining how to do that is another
great opportunity for our community to excel and prosper together. Realizing we
are all foreign, consider how to connect with the people of your native
land(s). How to share insight there and encourage cultural, educational and
business outreach. Once you figure out ways to do that - just do it.

And people here are starting to really attack this challenge and have
success.

Consider, at the Community of Minds get together on 11/17/04, the CIO of the
Cleveland Museum of Art demonstrated dozens of programs they have developed
there to use information technology to connect with remote people around the
world. While most local arts enthusiasts may only see such effort as a way to
share the treasures of our museum with people of distant lands, the museum sees
this as a program to connect Cleveland with those people and to sell them on
some aspects that make NEO the best place in the world to be. Through the
efforts of the CMA, it is certain the global opinion of NEO improves, making
this a more desirable place for global citizens interested in the arts to come
visit, study, and live - it puts us on the map with "Creative Class"
leaders, which is exactly the objective of 10,000s of people here in our
community.

Another community leader attending the Community of Minds meeting had recently
spent 5 months in Zimbabwe setting up a knowledge network to help that nation's
best and brightest high school students find advanced study opportunities in
America. We discussed focusing that program on attracting those exceptional
minds here. Achieving that goal should be quite easy, and the model can be
expanded to embrace other foreign nations.

There are many easy steps to take to improve our situation with this issue,
and there are other long term objectives to set. At the highest level, we have
the opportunity to become a voice in the development of US national
policies that help solve these problems for all of America and the world - for
now, let's do the smart things we may for our people, here now and those that
we may attract and retain - let's be proactively international.

Post your ideas and thoughts here - add comments below, or add pages to this
book. If you don't know how - email me... Norm Roulet at norm@icearth.com