A Cleveland State University study finds that Greater Cleveland's immigrant community is one of the smartest in the land.
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Dr. Giovanni Piedimonte, an immigrant from Italy, is chief of the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- It didn't take Dr. Giovanni Piedimonte long to realize that he was far from Italy but far from alone when he landed in Cleveland three years ago and joined the staff of the Cleveland Clinic.
It quickly became obvious, he said, that he was part of a small but talented wave of newcomers.
"This is something you see very readily in the corridors of the Cleveland Clinic," said Piedimonte, a Sicily-born pediatrician and the chief of the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital. "There's people from all over the world in white coats."
In Piedimonte's view, multiculturalism lends his employer a competitive edge. About one-third of his colleagues are immigrants, he said, and most possess world-class skills.
"One of the secrets of the Cleveland Clinic is that it takes the best of the best," he said. "It doesn't matter where you are from."
That attitude, prevalent in the region's healthcare industry, is stoking a powerful demographic trend in Greater Cleveland, a new study from Cleveland State University reveals. Cleveland immigrants, though few in number, comprise one of the nation's brightest classes of new Americans.
Some researchers see an economic force that could help propel the city into the new economy.
Immigrants number about 114,000 in the five-county metro area, making up only 5 percent of the population of Cuyahoga, Lorain, Lake, Geauga and Medina counties, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That ranks Greater Cleveland near the bottom among major metros for the size of its foreign-born community.
But what they lack in numbers, Cleveland immigrants make up for in smarts. According to an analysis by CSU's Center for Population Dynamics, 40 percent of the region's adult immigrants have a college degree. That ranks Cleveland seventh in the nation for the skill level of its foreign-born community.
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On a walk through Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital, Dr. Giovanni Piedimonte stops to chat with Dr. Kaveh Ardalan and Dr. Andy Zeft (right). More impressive still, 21 percent of local immigrants have earned a master's or a doctorate degree. That ranks Cleveland fifth among big cities for international talent, ahead of Boston.
The immigrant skill level is even more profound in contrast to the general population, the study notes. Only 29 percent of Greater Clevelanders have a college degree and fewer than 11 percent hold an advanced degree.
Those huddled masses of the early 20th century are no more, the worry over illegal immigrants a distraction. Immigrants to Cleveland are likely arriving with a work visa and a skill that makes a local employer more competitive, said Richey Piiparinen, the director of the population center.
"These are real change agents," he said. "These people are part of globalization. These people are key to our economy going forward."
Piiparinen credits the region's medical industry for helping diversify the local workforce. He said hospitals and medical schools readily welcome international talent.
Margaret Wong, a Cleveland immigration lawyer, said the same could be said of the region's technology sector, which promotes a brainy chain migration.
"IT companies, they all hire immigrants with high skills," she said. "They bring their friends, and they become entrepreneurs."
/Meanwhile, some of the region's major employers are reluctant to work with immigrants, she said, maybe to their disadvantage.
Numerous studies document the outsized economic impact of high skill immigrants and their penchant for innovation and entrepreneurship. Research by Vivek Wadhwa at Duke University found that immigrants were behind more than half of the high-tech companies founded in Silicon Valley from 1995 to 2005.
More recently, economists at Rutgers and Princeton universities found that a one-percentage point increase in college educated immigrants as a share of the population increased patents per capita by 9 to 18 percent.
Piiparinen thinks the region's immigrant community will grow naturally as the jobs emerge. He notes that Greater Cleveland's medicine and university cluster, "eds and meds," is the nation's 11th largest.
"Our local talent base can't fill these jobs," he said. "And medical research scientists don't grow on trees."
Others think the region could do more to stoke an encouraging demographic trend.
Neil Ruiz, a senior policy analyst at the Brookings Institution, examined Cleveland's international student population as part of a nationwide study. He found that the region's international students are unusually bright--with an above-average number pursing master's and doctorate degrees--but that they often don't stick around.
About 40 percent of Cleveland's international students stay on after graduation, he found. That's below the national average and well below cities like New York, where about 70 percent of the graduates enter the local workforce.
Ruiz thinks the business community could do more to capture a promising talent stream. He cites the example of Los Angeles, where local businesses work with international students at the University of Southern California to develop export strategies.
"The foreign-born community is an element of the economy that Cleveland could leverage," Ruiz said. "They have connections abroad. They're bilingual. They can be utilized."
From his position at the top of a busy children's hospital, Piedimonte both reflects and observes the immigrant influence.
He's a big, outgoing man who has trouble navigating a hallway without stopping to chat with colleagues. He shows a special interest in the ethnic backgrounds he encounters. Egyptian. Chinese. Hungarian. Indian.
"I see people who bring talent, energy, a different way of looking at things," he said.
The same can be said of Piedimonte. He's a widely published geneticist and pulmonary expert. His wife, Dr. Miriam Perez, is also a pediatrician for the Clinic. An immigrant from Colombia, she's developing a pediatric clinic at Lutheran Hospital for Spanish-speaking patients. The couple's six children are multi-lingual, including a son going off to Stanford.
At home and at work, Piedimonte says he sees the secret to America's success. It's in the DNA.
"Ethnic diversity in genetic patterns is associated with better reproduction," he said. "This country is so beautiful, so dynamic, because of all these influences coming together."