Time's up.
Nope, not New York City.
Nope, not San Francisco.
Yep, Toronto and Vancouver.
Between 2001 and 2002, there was a 55% decrease in the number of immigrant visas doled out in the good ol' U S of A.
Just three years ago, when we asked young talent about the communities they thought were "cool" or where they wanted to live, US destinations topped the list. Today, Canada, Australia, England and Ireland are popping up with enough frequency to make us wonder: Are we loosing our swagger as the international melting pot, the destination country for the world's biggest brains? I'm afraid so.
What's worse, there will be a LAG before we feel the effects. Sort of like weight gain or heart disease...a silent but deadly problem.
What can we do?
- Get global. Read up about what other countries are doing to attract the next generation. Check out the city/state of Singapore in building "Biopolis." A full THIRD of their 4,000 Ph.D's are expats from other countries. Singapore boasts one of the US's top cancer docs, plus the Scot who cloned Dolly the sheep.
- Help your community understand that you're not competing with your neighbor for talent. You're competing with Budapest, Bangalore, Singapore and Shanghai.
- Visit. What makes these emerging cool communities so cool? Find out for yourself. If your community is talking Bioscience, visit Singapore. If you're talking design and innovation, go to the Northern Crescent of Europe (Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark.) While there, visit the fastest growing companies, the mayors, the economic development pros, walk the emerging neighborhoods, and talk to the folks at airports. Where are people coming from? And why?
I was inspired by the number of downtown development professionals in Washington state last week who told me that "history" is imperative to building a future. Darn right it is. America's story cannot be written without telling the story of the Africans, Irish, Italians, Chinese, Hispanic, European, and other ethnic pops who washed to our shores by choice or by force. The US's story is inherently about our diversity. Past is prologue. Diversity is key to the US's brain gain.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
- a line from "The New Colossus," as appears on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty
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