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Opinion | Immigration is the talent strategy America needs
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Businesses in Michigan and across the country are facing urgent challenges: workforce shortages, shifting tariff policies, delayed business growth, and a loss of opportunities, leading to unprecedented uncertainty.
Immigrants and needed immigration policy changes are critical to addressing these challenges. New Americans made up almost 20% of the US workforce in 2023. Immigrant workers sustain significant portions of vital US industries like agriculture, construction, and manufacturing. In Michigan, immigrants comprise 8.7% of our workforce and 18.6% of Michigan’s STEM workforce — despite making up only 7.4% of the state’s population.
Since January 2025, the US has lost more than a million workers. Employers are struggling to recruit the talent they need to stay competitive and retain their existing workforce — many of whom face threats to their legal status under programs like Temporary Protected Status.
Cities and regions do not grow without immigrants. Immigration accounts for all of Michigan’s net population growth, whether one looks back to 2020 or 2000.
Chambers of commerce, and the businesses they represent, are feeling the effects. They are also stepping up to address these challenges and find solutions.
On Thursday, chamber of commerce leaders from across the country are in Grand Rapids for the American Immigration Council’s annual Global Talent Chamber Network Convening to discuss the impact of immigration policies, challenges facing employers, share best practices and solutions for international talent attraction and retention, and strategize how to keep the economic and workforce needs front and center with policymakers.
For our organizations, the Grand Rapids Chamber and Global Detroit, which are co-hosting the convening this year, it is an opportunity to spotlight our state’s leadership in recruiting and retaining immigrant talent. Programs like the Michigan Global Talent Initiative — an initiative supported by both Republican and Democratic majorities in the Michigan Legislature — have helped the state attract more than 54,000 additional college-educated international workers to fill unmet talent needs.
West Michigan employers and universities are also leading the way in developing new pathways for a portion of the 38,500 international students who study at Michigan’s colleges and universities to be lawfully employed by Michigan companies.
Our state exemplifies what it means to work and collaborate toward a shared goal: to build and maintain a strong workforce that meets the demands of today and prepares Michigan for the future.
But we cannot do it alone. While it is flattering to be held up to a national audience as a model for what’s possible, Michigan and America’s economies still require immigration policies that are consistent and reliable.
Local businesses and chambers are already innovating and pivoting to meet the moment, but what they need is for policymakers in Washington to champion policies that provide continuity in immigrant workers’ legal status, create steady and predictable flows of new workers through employment-based visa programs, and international student pipelines.
As business leaders gather in Grand Rapids Thursday to discuss doing business in a shifting political landscape, one thing is clear: immigrant talent is not a political talking point. It is an economic imperative.
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