Popular Articles

Sweet marketing music

Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

read more
by Andrew Tellijohn
June/July 2007

Related Article

Real Estate

Read more

Immigration

Robert Aronson
Aronson & Associates
612.339.0517
raronson@aronsonimmigration.com
www.aronsonimmigration.com

Complex issue
affects all firms;
how to navigate

WHEN U.S. IMMIGRATION and Customs Enforcement raided the Swift meatpacking plant in Worthington last December, about one-eighth of the plant’s workforce was wiped out, requiring Swift to close down its operations for two weeks.

What is implicit in the raid is that the issues posed by immigration, both good and bad, are no longer restricted to large, metropolitan areas. Immigration is an issue that affects almost every business – large and small – and economic segment in the 21st century.

Immigrants are dispersed throughout the state, working in a range of positions from university professors and business executives to unskilled labor. In fact, Minnesota has about 300,000 residents who were born abroad, thereby making this state the 21st most populous state for foreign nationals.

The economic impact is huge. Look at any community or economic segment of the state. The Twin Cities metropolitan area has countless ethnic business establishments that add life and vitality to the urban experience. Students in suburban communities come from Asia and Africa. We have some of the largest populations of refugees from Somalia, Laos and the former Soviet Union.

Each year, foreign migrant workers harvest crops for local and national markets. The University of Minnesota has the nation’s largest Chinese student population who disproportionately are engaged in advanced degree studies in various scientific disciplines. Foreign students in large measure staff our state’s resorts and camps.

Nursing homes seek foreign aides to solve a chronic shortage in the profession. The state’s high technology and biomedical enterprises retain their competitive edge by recruiting the best and most talented workforce, many of whom are foreign nationals. Foreign companies invest millions of dollars in Minnesota-based enterprises and also transfer their key personnel to the state.

The benefits of immigration for business and the local economy are clear, in my view. The challenge for business owners is keeping up with the legal complexities and government policies that shape this many-sided issue. After all, immigration can be the key legal requirement to recruiting highly skilled workers for positions that cannot be adequately staffed by domestic workers.

So here is the situation now facing an increasing number of Minnesota businesses. On the one hand, they require highly qualified foreign nationals to retain their economic competitiveness. For example, much of our state’s economy is high tech.

 Nationally, 50 percent of all R&D professionals and 25 percent (and rising) of all new doctoral students are foreign born. Take out this class of job applicants and high-tech businesses would be placed at a competitive disadvantage. The same situation holds true for a wide range of other economic segments in which the domestic workforce falls short of meeting legitimate staffing needs.

But our immigration system is plagued by delays, visa backlogs, bureaucratic inefficiencies and ongoing compliance exposure that all too often adds costs, frustration and uncertainty to the recruitment of workers. There is a disconnect between the high-speed, competitive race for skilled talent and an anachronistic, outmoded immigration system.

Impact of reform
In his State of the Union address, President Bush identified comprehensive immigration reform as one of his primary legislative priorities. So what does this phrase mean – and how does such a reform measure impact business in Minnesota?

In essence, immigration reform seeks to align our immigration system more closely with current-day realities by balancing three central pillars of an effective system:

• Cut off the flow into this country of illegal aliens through enhanced border security;

• Apprehend and expel foreign nationals who violate our laws through more stringent internal enforcement and expanded grounds for truly threatening behavior; and

• Expand the possibilities for lawful status based on realistic business criteria through immigration benefits reform.

Immigration should be the human corollary to just-in-time inventory control: a flexible, results driven system that matches recruitment requirements with business demands. New laws that expand our quota system and enlarge possibilities for recruiting highly talented and critically needed workers are a win-win situation.

They would enable Minnesota businesses to enhance their efficiency and competitiveness, and make it more feasible for much-needed workers to come into this country rather than sneaking in through the back door (illegal immigration) or going elsewhere.

The liberalization of immigration based on employment is not a call to opening the floodgates of immigration. Rather, it provides business with access to a knowledge-based workforce that is required to maintain a competitive edge; eliminates the counterproductive barriers that force all too many business owners and foreign nationals to circumvent our immigration laws; and potentially cleans out our outmoded immigration system in a manner that will enable our government to effectively stop the inward flow of illegal immigrants.

In this highly fluid environment, business decision-makers would be well advised when hiring foreign nationals to consider the following:

1. Plan in advance since the immigration process can take time.

2. Be aware of the immigrant visa backlogs by consulting with the U.S. State Department’s Visa Bulletin so as to keep abreast of the backlogs that plague our immigration system. This bulletin can be assessed at travel.state.gov/visa/frvi/bulletin/bulletin 1360.

3. Make sure to document the steps undertaken to qualify a foreign worker for a visa and retain documentation required in the event of government audit or workplace enforcement action.

4. Treat foreign nationals in a non-discriminatory manner since there are strict immigration and labor laws that penalize employers that employ or pay foreign nationals in a substandard way.

5. Monitor immigration reform developments carefully since there may be changes underway in our immigration system that will open up new visa possibilities covering foreign nationals working in a wider range of employment positions.