February 23, 2005

A Nation of Immigrants (Still)

Neither 9-11, nor a sluggish economy have diminished immigration levels in the U.S. In fact, those folks who have immigrated here since the turn of the decade are now coming in with greater degrees of human capital compared to immigrants of previous decades -- so says this new report by USA Today:

    Of the 3.4 million immigrants age 25 or older who arrived from 2000 to 2004, 30.7% were high school dropouts. That compares with 33.2% of the 3.5 million who came from 1995 to 2000, says Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California. And more recent arrivals are college-educated: 34.3% had a bachelor's degree or higher, compared with 32.5% in the late 1990s.

    Of the foreign-born Hispanics age 25 and over who arrived since 2000, about 13% had bachelor's degrees or more compared with 9% of those who came in the 1990s, according to Frey's analysis. Almost 65% of Asian newcomers had college degrees, up from 49%.

Why are today's recent immigrants coming in with better education than those of the nineties? Dowell Myers gets to the crux of the issue:

    "Why are so many more immigrants now highly skilled?" Myers says. "Is it because the U.S. educational system is not putting out as many high-skilled workers? Do we have to import more workers?"

    The government issued 195,000 visas a year to specialized, college-educated foreign workers sponsored by employers in 2001, 2002 and 2003, triple the norm.

The article also notes that the immigrant "second generation" -- who represent 11 percent of the total U.S. population -- is exceeding the educational and economic profiles of their parents, which should be hardly new news but at least they're officially measuring it. For all you stat geeks, go here for the detailed data.

Hat tip Anna Todorova

Posted by thomas at February 23, 2005 08:48 PM | TrackBack