By Liz Goodwin
A new Brookings report finds that college-educated immigrants now outnumber those who enter the United States with just a high school degree. The disparity is especially striking in urban areas, with college-educated immigrants outnumbering their high school diploma-lacking counterparts by 25 percent in 44 major U.S. cities. Overall, 30 percent of working-age immigrants have a college degree now, compared to just 19 percent in 1980. Only 28 percent of immigrants in the United States lack a high school education.
And the trend appears to have escalated. More college-educated immigrants came to the United States in the past 10 years than immigrants lacking a high school education, in part due to increased demand from U.S. employers. Half of all skilled immigrants are overqualified for their current jobs, the report finds. The Washington Post summarized the Brookings findings in a front-page report today, and found that some regional employers are increasingly favoring a foreign-born workforce.
Some employers may say they prefer immigrants to native-born workers. When Samir Kumar needs to hire employees for his Northern Virginia-based IT business, he often looks overseas. Not only do workers from India and Ukraine have the required training, but their expectations are lower, he said.
"They actually don't demand a very high amount of salary, and the expectations are kind of grounded and they don't jump around so much" between companies, said the 39-year-old Ashburn resident, an immigrant from India. U.S.-born technology and business analysts are hard to find and hard to retain, he said, while immigrants with the same skills and education "are much easier to manage."
Most immigrants are granted entry into the United States based on their family ties in the country--not their skill level. A smaller number of H1-B visas go out to employers to offer jobs to immigrants when Americans with the right skills can't be found. To qualify for this visa, an immigrant must have a college degree. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other business leaders (including Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch) have argued that the immigration system should shift away from the family reunification model, and give employers more leeway to attract high-skilled immigrants to settle in America and perhaps open their own businesses that would create jobs here.
The Brookings report urges lawmakers to prioritize skilled immigration as well, while also focusing on raising the skill level of immigrants who are already here and lack a high school education--many of whom are not authorized to be in the country.
The report's authors used U.S. census data to make their calculations, and say they were thus unable to distinguish between illegal and legal immigrants in the data. They estimate a 10 to 20 percent undercounting of illegal immigrants in the census.
Experts estimate that more than a fifth of all adults living in the United States without a high school diploma are illegal immigrants. The report mentions that most research suggests that new low-skilled immigrants entering the country can drive down wages for lower-skilled American workers. Brookings researchers also found that low-skilled immigrants are more likely to come from Mexico and have fewer English skills than high-skilled immigrants do.
In cities where the immigrant population is growing very fast, such as Omaha, low-skilled immigrants outnumber high-skilled ones. Low-skilled immigrants also outnumber high-skilled ones in many border towns and the Great Plains cities. High-skilled immigrants, meanwhile, cluster in coastal cities like Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. You can see the urban distribution of the immigrant population on the map below:
0 comments