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Mayor Bloomberg Says Send Immigrants to Detroit

By Tom Liddy | May 1, 2011 8:52pm | Updated on May 2, 2011 6:57am
Mayor Bloomberg suggests that immigrants be required to live in Detroit for the first few years.
Mayor Bloomberg suggests that immigrants be required to live in Detroit for the first few years.
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DNAinfo/Jill Colvin

By Tom Liddy

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MANHATTAN - Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses - as long as they go to Detroit.

Mayor Bloomberg suggested Sunday that the federal government could rectify the Motor City's plunging population by requiring immigrants to live in Detroit at first.

"I'll give you a good example of how you can fix some of the problems in America," the mayor said on NBC's "Meet the Press" morning.

"If I were the federal government, assuming you could wave a magic wand...you pass a law letting immigrants come in as long as they agree to go to Detroit and live there five or ten years, start businesses, take jobs, whatever."

"You would populate Detroit overnight because half the world wants to come here," he added.

Detroit's population has plummeted over the past decade, dropping 25 percent to 714,000.

The city boasted nearly 2 million people in the years after World War II.