LANSING (Bloomberg) — Michigan Governor Rick Snyder calls himself the most pro-immigration governor in the country, and he’s out to prove it.

The governor says immigrants should get green cards if they can pay $500,000 to start a business and create five jobs. The current requirement is $1 million and 10 jobs, or $500,000 in depressed areas.

Other Republican governors in Arizona, Alabama and South Carolina are embroiled in political tumult over their efforts to weed out illegal immigrants. Snyder assigned agencies to woo educated immigrants to the only state that lost population in the 2010 U.S. census. He’s called well-educated, skilled foreigners crucial to building Michigan’s economy.

“I view it as education, to explain the facts to people,” Snyder said in an interview at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit yesterday. “They’re not taking jobs, they’re creating jobs.”

Snyder, 53, a former venture capitalist and chairman of computer maker Gateway Inc., wants Congress to ease the entry of people with advanced degrees, especially in science and technical fields, and newly minted foreign graduates to work in the U.S. The first-term governor’s public embrace of immigrants is an anomaly in a party more often associated with arguments for Mexican border fences and deportations.

“It’s a pleasant surprise,” said Nick Schulz, DeWitt Wallace fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy and Research, which advocates free markets. Schulz said he was unaware of other governors so publicly pushing such moves. Schulz advocates the same changes as Snyder, which he said are stymied because legal immigration is politically enmeshed with illegal.

“It’s a tough issue for Republicans,” Schulz, 39, said in a telephone interview. “You have to have somebody who’s making the case. Too often immigrants are a lumped mass.

Embracing skilled immigrants is a common stance among Republicans, Schulz said, including presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. However, presidential candidates have hammered at illegal residents without making much of immigration’s upside, Schulz said.

The governor says immigrants should get green cards if they can pay $500,000 to start a business and create five jobs. The current requirement is $1 million and 10 jobs, or $500,000 in depressed areas.

He says Congress should eliminate the 20,000 annual limit on H-1B work visas for those with advanced degrees from U.S. universities. He wants to raise the 65,000 annual cap on H-1B visas for others.

A study sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and the Partnership for a New American Economy, a New York-based coalition of mayors and business people who advocate more opportunities for immigrants, found that hiring foreigners with advanced degrees from U.S. universities increases employment for natives.

That is especially true of immigrants who studied science, technology, engineering and mathematics, according to the report. For every 100 such foreign workers added to the workforce, 262 jobs were created for U.S. natives during 2000-2007, according to the report released last month. The report said immigration had no effect on employment for U.S. natives.

That’s disputed by the Federation for American Immigration Reform based in Washington, which says many U.S. citizens with technical and scientific degrees pursue other careers because foreigners have driven down A November FAIR report cites data that show no shortage of U.S.-born students with technical degrees. It notes a 2003 federal survey in which six unnamed employers said H-1B workers would work for less than U.S.-born candidates.

Such arguments don’t sway Snyder.

“I’m happy to be out in front,” he said yesterday. “Michigan can be a leader in doing this.”

Snyder’s open arms contrast with Republicans who took hard-line stands.