GlobalErie reader Richard Herman pointed me to an interesting column from Elizabeth Sullivan, the foreign affairs columnist and associate of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

There are many who believe that America needs to adopt a protectionist mindset to hold on to what is left of its manufacturing might — and to grow in the future.

Sullivan offers an interesting counter argument.

Here’s an excerpt:

U.S. technology policies are failing. But they are failing not because they don’t do enough to hold in technology. They are failing because they do too little to create a climate for new investments and high-tech jobs.

Technology and brainpower cannot be bottled up like wine.

Instead of trying to cast a net of protectionism around the U.S. economy, the presidential contenders - in partnership with rust-belt cities like Cleveland - need to get smart about using high-tech visas and high-tech jobs as a lure for growth and a magnet for entrepreneurial immigration. Without that forward thinking, the innovation that immigrants can help incubate will remain untapped and immigrants will continue to be the pointless, populist punching bag for economic failure.

For those whose American dream has dissolved into a nightmare of foreclosed homes, squeezed wages and mounting debt, it’s easy to portray immigrants as the force that’s holding down wages and siphoning off jobs instead of the means to revitalize manufacturing regions like Cleveland.

But that’s only because too many of us forget how immigrant brainpower and energy helped make America the innovation powerhouse it is today.

In Cleveland, a stellar opportunity presents itself right now to use the political pressure possible in a presidential year to carve out an Ohio experiment in just what high-tech immigration could again do for one economically hurting region of America.

I encourage you to read the rest.

I also encourage you to think about how the manufacturing economy was built in Erie in the first place. It was largely through immigrants.

Food for thought.