Gov. Eric Holcomb: Building relationships key to securing international investment

Indiana’s path to future economic success is a two-way street. We can’t wait for the world to figure out how wonderful this state is, and it’s not enough to sing our praises from the comfort of our own rooftops and desktops. We have to get out to other states and nations and shout it from their mountaintops.

That’s why on Sunday I’m traveling to Israel — my fifth international economic development trip since becoming governor. We’ll spend four full days there with a delegation of leaders from the agbiosciences industry to share Indiana’s success and learn from Israel’s experience as a global hub for technology, innovation, and research and development.

At the same time, arriving Sunday at the Indianapolis International Airport is a delegation of 30 foreign ambassadors across four continents for a mission organized by the U.S. Department of State. For three days, this international delegation from the Experience America Program will meet with Indiana business and community leaders to create new global partnerships and strengthen long-standing ones. Later in May, I’ll make a second economic development trip to Europe — this time visiting Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Switzerland. My last stop will be France, and I’ll fly back on the first-ever non-stop flight from Paris to Indianapolis.

I’m sorry I can’t be there to welcome our international visitors myself, but I know they will enjoy the natural hospitality Hoosiers are famous for everywhere they go. They’ll learn that the heart of our nation is located far from its coasts, right here in the Crossroads of America. They’ll learn about our world-class higher education institutions, our vibrant capital city, the charm of our rural communities — and the ways technology, innovation and entrepreneurship are transforming even our traditional stronghold industries, like farming and manufacturing.

For Indiana and for the nations represented in this foreign delegation, these trips have immediate and long-term value. We can find commonalities we never expected with nations and people very different from us.

For example, I’ve found one great need expressed by government and business leaders everywhere I go: finding and developing talent. In Japan, I saw a group of fourth graders in white lab coats tour an advanced manufacturing facility and learn about different career paths available to them in their own backyard. And, this image wasn’t a once-a-year occurrence in the Japanese businesses I visited. Connecting with local primary and secondary schools was just another part of the work these businesses did every day.

Those are the types of ideas you put in your back pocket and take home to share right away. Other trips lead to big wins down the road, like the Infosys announcement we made a couple weeks ago. Rather than outsourcing jobs from America, Infosys is doing the opposite. They are insourcing jobs — on steroids. And, Infosys’ planned $245 million investment is the direct result of an economic development trip we made to India at the end of 2017.

Sometimes international investment is the result of positive relationships built and nurtured over many years — spanning generations and many governors. That’s exactly the relationship Indiana has with Japan. More than 290 Japanese businesses operate in our state today, and those companies employ more than 65,000. We took an economic development trip there last year to make sure our Japanese partners understand that Indiana doesn’t take them for granted.

Making and maintaining connections with people is an investment all of us can make that always pays dividends—whether that’s with our neighbors across the street or across the Atlantic. Indiana’s physical position in the center of the country, our economic position as a state that works for businesses, and our reputation for Hoosier hospitality give us a natural leg-up on other states.

It’s the two-way street that will take Indiana to the next level.

Eric Holcomb

Indiana governor

U.S. needs to welcome refugees here

Forget, if we must, the sob stories — the tales of war-ravaged people fleeing for their lives with whatever they can carry on their backs and on their heads and with whichever of their children they can find in the smoldering, terrifying chaos.

Forget the broken families, the raped sisters, the years of waiting day after day in makeshift camps for good news that might never come.

Forget that any American true to our own traditional values is called to act with compassion.

Consider, instead, this: America needs refugees.

Refugees provide us with a window on those huge parts of the world that most of us would otherwise never see. From them we learn about societal structure, educational priorities, and the penetration of technological advances in places little known or studied. We discern profiles of sickness and health. Refugees introduce us to knowledge, unfamiliar skills, and beliefs held by people of different cultures. They help us understand conflicts that beset other nations — nations in a world we purport to lead.

We cannot lead, and we cannot advocate effectively for peace, if we are ignorant of these things. Refugees educate us.

They ease labor shortages in warehouses, factories, farms, hotels and similar establishments suited to workers just learning the language and eager to get a foothold in their new country. Catholic Charities and Exodus Refugee Immigration, Indiana’s resettlement agencies, succeed in ensuring that new refugees who are able to work find decent jobs because enlightened employers who prize refugees’ toughness and enthusiasm seek them out, and demand exceeds supply.

Recounting by phone the medical history of a patient I was referring to a fellow physician, I began, “This is a 35-year-old refugee from Congo who spent 16 years in a camp in Uganda...” My colleague on the other end of the line cut me off.

“What makes him a refugee?” he asked.

Like most Americans I encounter, he did not know. Terms like refugee, immigrant, legal, migrant”, and undocumented were all jumbled up in his mind. He did not know that refugees are by United Nations definition victims of persecution, or that they flee involuntarily, first to a neighboring country, because their lives and the lives of their families depend on them doing so. Refugees leave their homes and all they have ever known not because they want to have an easier life or to earn more money, but because they have no choice. They arrive in the United States — legally — after an arduous screening process that typically takes years.

Thanks to its nationwide network of agencies that coordinate with local health-care providers, employers, schools, and government offices, America’s multisector resettlement program has been a recognized global champion for decades. We know from long experience what it takes to begin integrating refugees into their new society, and we are exceptionally good at it.

We also know what we are getting from it. Most refugees are impoverished when they arrive. Many have had little or no formal schooling. Some have health problems born of years of deprivation. But refugees give back far more than they receive and have qualities—resilience, survivorship, perseverance, passion, selfless love of family, confident faith in the future—that in many ways make them the crème de la crème of humanity. By welcoming them, we get the best.   

Arguing against America’s acceptance of refugees, a politician recently said to me, “What’s the point — we can’t save them all.” This is true. We can’t. But we can save some of them, and we can certainly save tens of thousands more than we are saving now, and when we do, America will be stronger because of it.

Refugees are our heritage, our founding mothers and fathers, the molders of our institutions and the builders of our roads and railways. They enrich our language, our universities, and our economy. If America is to continue to grow with the lush, bountiful diversity of our past, refugees and all they will become are an essential part of our future.

We need refugees. They are who we are.

Ellen Einterz

Refugee Health, Marion County Public Health Department

Safeguard Indiana's voter registration rolls

Despite the national attention that voter identification laws garner, many may be surprised to learn that the first of its kind was written and survived U.S. Supreme Court scrutiny thanks in part to the sorry state of Indiana’s voter rolls at the time. 

In addition to the ID law, Indiana participates in the IVRC, otherwise known as the “Crosscheck” system, where state officials compare rolls to identify outdated or duplicate records matched elsewhere. Current legal challenges to the state’s use of such data would set Hoosiers back decades if seen through, however.

If one organization had its way, officials would not be entrusted to immediately update a registration even if they had written proof provided by a counterpart that a person subsequently registered in another state. This would handcuff officials from continuing the progress made to maintain our records after Indiana was sued twice for bloated rolls since 2006.

Indiana is a proving ground for political interests to undercut an already limited set of federal standards for keeping voter rolls updated and reliable. This effort should be disposed of for the joint benefit of the voters and the officials sworn to serve them.

Logan Churchwell

Communications and Research Director, Public Interest Legal Foundation

Tully is right about need to fight smoking

I would like to thank Matthew Tully for his April 13 column, “A way to make Indiana greater — attack smoking.” I agree that our state is long overdue for serious tobacco reform.

Smoking is a leading cause of cancer death in our country. That alone should be enough to inspire our lawmakers to fix Indiana’s smoking problem. But as Tully points out, the General Assembly missed opportunities this past session to increase Indiana’s cigarette tax, improve funding for tobacco cessation programs and raise the minimum age of sale for all tobacco products to 21. 

Why didn’t these proposals receive overwhelming support in the General Assembly, when we all know someone who has been touched by cancer? Having lost my dad to smoking-caused lung cancer, I don’t want anyone else to go through what he and my family had to. Tobacco use is entirely preventable, but Hoosiers won’t be able to avoid or quit an addiction without the tools to fight back.

Tully’s ideas for confronting smoking are spot-on. I will continue to urge my lawmakers to support legislation that makes our state healthier.

Millie Sowers

Indianapolis