Highly skilled temporary and permanent immigrants in the United States now outnumber lower-skilled ones, marking a dramatic shift in the foreign- born workforce that could have profound political and economic implications in the national debate over immigration.
This shift in America’s immigration population, based on census data, is summarized in a report released today by the Brookings Institution. It found that 30 percent of the country’s working-age immigrants, regardless of legal status, have at least a bachelor’s degree, while 28 percent lack a high school diploma.
The shift had been in the works for the past three decades, a period that has seen a dramatic increase in the population born outside the U.S. But in 2007, the percentage of highly skilled workers overtook that of lower-skilled workers.
The trend reflects a fundamental change in the structure and demands of the U.S. economy, which in the past decades transformed from an economy driven by manufacturing to one driven by information and technology. The report also offers a new perspective on the national immigration discourse, which tends to fixate on low-skilled, and often illegal, workers.
“Too often the immigration debate is driven by images on television of people jumping over fences,” said Benjamin Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Council, which advocates for immigration reform.
Changing concerns
Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that advocates tighter immigration restrictions, said the report raises other concerns.
“It seems, based on this and other studies, that we’ve got an oversupply of highly skilled workers coming into this country,” he said, adding that the study’s findings were not surprising. “New college graduates are faring very poorly on the labor market, and what the report is telling us is that we’re bringing in a high number of workers to compete with them.”
The study based its findings on the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey as well as data from the bureau’s Current Population Survey that go back to 1980.
As the number of working- age immigrants in the U.S. has swelled, from 14.6 million in 1994 to 29.7 million in 2010, the numbers of highly skilled and lower-skilled immigrants have risen, but the highly skilled sector has risen faster, according to the report. Among the causes are the recent rise in the number of international students and of temporary H-1B visas, for which a bachelor’s degree is usually required, the report said.
The shift accelerated in the past decade, with nearly a third of working-age new arrivals in the 2000s coming with college degrees, the report said.
The report found that immigrants’ skill levels varied in different locations, with coastal cities and established “gateway” metropolitan areas attracting more highly skilled immigrants, while areas near the U.S.-Mexico border draw more low-skilled immigrants.
Educated head for D.C.
Workers from Mexico and Central America tend to be lower-skilled, while India, China and the Philippines send many more highly skilled workers than lower-skilled ones, said Audrey Singer, a senior fellow at Brookings who co-wrote the study.
The Washington metropolitan area is one of the top magnets for educated immigrants, with 189 highly skilled immigrant workers for every 100 lower-skilled ones, according to the study. Other high concentrations of college-educated immigrants include San Jose, Calif., and Seattle.
The study also found that half of highly skilled immigrants in the U. S. are working in jobs for which they are overqualified.
“Education credentials and language are big hurdles,” said Matthew Hall, a University of Illinois sociology professor who co-wrote the report.
Some employers say they prefer immigrants to native-born workers.
The immigrants have the required training, but their expectations are lower.
