Amid the cheerful effusiveness that characterizes Detroit’s ever-growing collection of non-profits of late, our latest non-profit challenge partner , Global Detroit,  keeps itself relatively low-key, with a small office tucked unobtrusively in the Green Garage.

Not this green garage. This Green Garage.

As it turns out, Global Detroit’s mission extends well beyond the limits of that small avant-garde office space and reaches into the murky waters of the international; among its various goals are the growth of foreign investment in Detroit, greater retention of foreign students, and nothing short of a cultural shift in the way that Michigan handles immigrants and immigration. All of the above eventually sorted itself out in a way that made me understand why I had to write this blog post: I’m an immigrant.

I’m an immigrant several times over, actually. I have also been an international student and have worked in the complex office of a multinational corporation digging its way into a foreign market. In a lot of ways, the experience of migration and immigration has made me the person I am today (that would be: a person who wishes Facebook extended the “It’s Complicated” option to “Hometown”).

 Seriously, Facebook. It’s complicated.

‘Yes, Kathy, that’s nice, but what’s the point?’

 Here’s the point: I’m an immigrant to Detroit. And I’d like to explain to other immigrants why Detroit is worthy of being their destination. Below are five reasons (in no particular order of importance) why you should make Detroit your home of homes.

 1. The government actually wants you to come here. You can’t take that for granted everywhere.

Maybe I’m biased because my team worked on the Welcoming Michigan initiative during our Global Detroit challenge, but it seems pretty awesome that there’s a government-funded program that exists purely to teach receiving communities (that is, people who are ‘local’, compared to arriving immigrants) how to be cooler hosts. Some of this is raising awareness of how multifaceted and impossibly jumbled the immigration process can be – my team had the opportunity to attend an excellent Immigration 101 seminar, where we not only learned about the thorny minefield that immigrants (illegal and legal) navigate, but also received a large array of colorful “Hello, Neighbor!” pins that Welcoming Michigan gives out to individuals who want to show their, well, welcoming-ness. Free swag: always the way to the heart.

 2. If you’re an international student, sing Motown: Detroit companies are hiring, and there are people trying to make the process seamless for you.

 This is the first picture that came up when I Googled ‘International Student Retention’. I’m not sure what’s happening, but they look both happy and about to indulge in delicious food. These are things for which to strive.

 Let’s just get this on the table, international students: you guys are great. You work hard, you get ridiculously good grades, you put money into the local economy, and then when you graduate you quietly take all your hard-earned knowledge and go home.

Wait, no. That last one’s not great at all. Fact is: it doesn’t make any sense to bring the most brilliant students across the world to Michigan’s many fabulous institutions of higher education, educate them within an inch of genius-level epiphany, and then send them home. We don’t want to give all that talent back. It happens in large part because for many HR departments, the process to retain international students is wrapped up in more unnecessarily-confusing paperwork than an elementary-school mummy costume. In response to this, Global Detroit’s Global Talent Retention Initiative (GTRI) is working with focused intensity on helping companies across Detroit attract, hire, and complete the necessary paperwork for international students. The Challenge Detroit Fellows working with this organization helped develop a framework for a GOemployer online campaign that will serve dual purposes: first, international students can identify employers ready and willing to hire them, and secondly, employers gain access to a pool of international talent that will diversify their employee pool.

 3. “What if I’m not an international student? What if I don’t have more than a few pennies to rub together, metaphorically, when I want to distantly imagine what life would be like as Scrooge McDuck?” Take heart: there’s room for all here.

Pictured above: not the lifestyle of most immigrants.

Hey, it’s cool! It’s not easy to be an immigrant at the best of times. When you’re an immigrant without a load of cash to throw at your problems, it gets infinitely more difficult. “This is depressing,” you’re probably thinking. “I thought you wanted me to move to Detroit, not to run away and live a life of exaggerated leisure lounging on the beaches in Cancun*.”

*Disclaimer: This lifestyle is highly unlikely to be sustainable and is also liable to end in tears. Tears and sunburn.

 The reason to move to Detroit is that here lies the opportunity that exists for almost any enterprise at which you would like to try your hand. Not only is there an astounding amount of space, support, and market for startups in Detroit, but there exist microloan programs that will help you make Detroit the Kitty Hawk for your ideas, such as ProsperUS Detroit.

 ProsperUS is a partnership built between Global Detroit and Southwest Housing Solutions and seeks to use the model of microfinance, originally developed for use in third-world economies until it occurred to everyone that it works, and currently seeks to make a difference in Cody-Rouge, North End, and Southwest Detroit. What sets ProsperUS apart from other lending opportunities (such as banks, which are notoriously unwilling to lend to people without existing capital) is the in-depth training that accompanies loans. If you have an idea you want to see making money or a difference – or both! – ProsperUS will provide you the information and the cash necessary to start it off, and Detroit will give you the wide-open market to rock it.

 4. Detroit’s on the up, and not just in one study’s data. This is the place you want to be, because it’s happening.

This turns up if you Google “Detroit, a happening place.” While something is certainly happening, I am fundamentally unqualified to tell you what. Reliable sources suggest this may be an elaborate rain dance.

 Okay, I’ll ‘fess up: I have never truly figured out what a ‘happening’ place is (no, I wasn’t a cool kid in school). I am always left wondering, ‘But what is happening?’ In that spirit of specificity, here are just a few things that are happening in Detroit when it comes to making you, prospective Detroit-bound immigrant, happy as a clam at high tide.

 The Cultural Ambassadors program rounds out the list of organizations that Challenge Detroit worked with under the umbrella of our Global Detroit challenge this past month. Cultural Ambassadors originated in Ann Arbor in an effort to leverage the international population of the town in order to expand its international horizons and promote cultural integration; in its current life, it works in the metro Detroit area to improve international talent attraction. Other organizations providing resources for foreign nationals and the companies looking to hire them include Automation Alley, TechTown, the Detroit Regional Economic Partnership, Consular Corps, Detroit International Visitors Council, and many other regional players, including state and municipal governments. (And yes: I pulled that list straight from the  fellow’s report on the Cultural Ambassadors program.)

 In other words: Detroit wants you here. Metro Detroit and Southeast Michigan wants you here. And there are organizations that will help you make it happen, and happen big, bold, and beautiful.

5. Detroiters are abnormally nice. Take advantage of this.

 This is the least capitalized-upon resource the city has to offer, and I don’t know why. Detroiters are nice. They are so nice that you can actually deliver an elevator speech in an elevator here. (Try that in New York City – people are going to think you’re concealing insanity not well at all.) In Detroit, I get elevator conversation pretty much every day. This would be less impressive if I didn’t live on the 5^th floor, which means that Detroiters are so compelled to niceness that they burst into polite conversation within 45 seconds, tops.

 So: what’s the take-away?

 If you’re in the market for home, come to Detroit.

Contributed by Fellow Kathy Tian