TCB February 2026

We have done remarkable things to make Philadelphia a more vibrant city in the past 30 years, much of it through public-private partnerships: The fiscal discipline imposed by the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA); the creation of Center City District to make our downtown one of the most desirable and dense residential CBDs in the country, and University City District to harness the energy of our major West Philly anchor institutions to make University City the second-most important job center in the City and the epicenter of biotech innovation; the creation of what is now Visit Philadelphia, which has driven leisure tourism to heights unimaginable in 1990 when I first moved here; Mayor Nutter’s successful effort to receive permission from Harrisburg to levy an additional penny of sales tax in Philadelphia to fund pension relief; the Beverage Tax that funds a dramatic expansion of pre-K and finances the Rebuild program, which has invested tens of millions of dollars into neighborhood parks and recreation centers; and Mayor Parker’s huge investments in both wellness and affordable housing that aim to address some real chronic challenges.

But we have also pursued a talent strategy, and I’m proud that much of it emanated from Economy League research.  Campus Philly, which has helped boost retention of our thousands of annual college graduates, emergedfrom our research.  Likewise, the Graduate! Network, which shone a spotlight on ‘combackers,’ adults who started but never finished their college degrees and has done amazing work to address that fact.  The Lenfest North Philly Workforce Initiative has helped to rationalize workforce development in a large section of the city. 

But I'd posit that among our most important contributions was made by an Economy League intern in the 1990s named Anuj Gupta who wrote a paper about how we needed to become a more welcoming region to immigrants if we were ever going to stem 5 decades of population decline, and a few years later The Welcoming Center was born. It is a critical piece of civic infrastructure that has been an indispensable driver of the bulk of the population growth we have experienced since we bottomed out in roughly 2000. Our foreign-born population has more than doubled since 2000. If not for that influx of foreign-born talent, not only would we be a much-diminished city and region in terms of population, but perhaps half of the job-creating businesses started in the past quarter century would not exist.  

Measure What Matters 

If we want a non-ideological, solutions-oriented way forward, here it is: treat immigration rights like economic infrastructure and measure outcomes. 

Not vibes. Outcomes. 

If we don't measure these things, we're just arguing. 

The Existential Threat 

Unfortunately thanks to current policies coming out of DC, which we cannot miss on the daily news, policies that are aimed to force welcoming cities like ours, which have come to embrace cultural diversity, to reverse course, we are facing the most severe and existential threat to our communal well-being in decades. And these are policies designed not to make us a better nation or better cities, but for pure political gain for a still powerful but evidently diminishing fragment of the far right, which clawed its way into power in the past decade.  
 
The event we held in partnership with Forward.us spotlighted what's at stake, from the impact on our world-class universities like the University of Pennsylvania that have been a beacon for the world’s best and brightest to study here and contribute to our world-leading scientific community, and sometimes stay and build families and businesses here; foreign enrollment is plummeting as global talent finds it increasingly difficult and irrational to choose America; to impact on hospitality and tourism, which in 2026 is expecting tens of thousands of international visitors for the 250th, FIFA's World Cup, and the World Trade Centers global conference - data shows that 17,000 visas have already been denied, with huge economic impact since every single foreign visitor stays at a hotel, eats in restaurants, and shops locally; to what we are calling "immigrant-dependent" businesses that rely on immigrants as owners, laborers, and customers, imperiling the hard-won but fragile vibrancy of revived commercial corridors in so many neighborhoods. 
 
In short, the emerging research is clear: we face an existential threat as a region and if we have to put up with 3 more years of the same, the economic damage will likely be irreversible.   

What We Can Do: Practical, Not Performative 

Our convening on talent, innovation, and Philadelphia's economy made one thing clear: we don't need one silver bullet. We need alignment across our region.  If ever there was a time for collaboration across lines of difference, it is now. 

We should build a regional talent welcome system that connects immigrants to credentialing English language supports legal navigation and employers with one front door not a maze. 

We should ask employers to do their part: create clear pathways, reduce needless barriers, recognize global credentials where appropriate, and invest in training that turns arrival into advancement. 

We should double down on new ideas, like the recently formed Live Work Philly, which aims to entice professionals seeking to relocate to choose Philadelphia. We ought to be reaching out to foreign graduate students, post-docs, and professionals on temporary visas now studying and working in places without our decades-long track record of welcoming the foreign-born and educate them about why they should choose Philadelphia.   

We should support legal stability and services as workforce infrastructure. If people can't plan, they can't fully participate. If they can't participate, we can't compete.