Thread: Report documents dramatic shift in immigrant workforce’s s

Report documents dramatic shift in immigrant workforce’s skill level

By Tara Bahrampour, Published: June 8

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 Thursday 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 United States. 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,â€

I knew this whole report and article was bogus when I read the first two sentences.

What a crock.

W

The average level of education of the people I know who've snuck across the border is 6th grade and out of the 37 illegals only 1 has any type of college. This article is BS

Again, a failure to separate immigrants from illegal immigrants. The border jumpers are poor and uneducated and they are the ones overwhelming our social systems - hospitals, schools, jails.

A lot of people from India are ,of late,Border Jumpers too. Those from India are claiming asylum so they are not deported so quicky and are given work permits.

I suspect instead of applying for the H-1B visa they are just coming across our southern border and already have a job waiting for them at some Indian owned business here in the USA.

Immigration must be slowed/stopped for awhile until we get our own citizens back to work.

Thousands of Indians entering US illegally from Mexico: Report

BOSTON: In a phenomenon that is "baffling" American border authorities, "thousands" of immigrants from India, "mostly young men from poor villages", entered the US illegally last year, crossing from Mexico into Texas, according to a media report.

More than 1,600 Indians have been caught since the influx began, mainly at the southern tip of Texas, early last year, the Los Angeles Times reported.

According to US border authorities, "an undetermined number, perhaps thousands (of Indian immigrants) are believed to have sneaked through undetected," a phenomenon that is "backing up court dockets, filling detention centres and triggering investigations."

The migration is "part of a mysterious and rapidly growing human-smuggling pipeline," the report said.

"The immigrants, mostly young men from poor villages, say they are fleeing religious and political persecution," the report said adding that most of the immigrants say they are from the Indian states of Punjab or Gujarat and have "common surnames" Patel and Singh.

About 650 Indians were arrested in southern Texas in the last three months of 2010 alone.

Indians are now the largest group of immigrants other than Latin Americans being caught at the Southwest border, the report said.

"The suddenness and still-undetermined cause of the Indian migration baffles many border authorities and judges," the report said.

The migration is the "most significant" human-smuggling trend being tracked by US authorities, the report quoted deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Kumar Kibble as saying.

"It is a dramatic increase," Kibble said. "We do want to monitor these pipelines and shut them down because it is a vulnerability. They could either knowingly or unknowingly smuggle people into the US that pose a national security threat."

In 2009, the Border Patrol arrested 99 Indians along the entire Southwest border. The journey for many of these immigrants begins from Mumbai to Dubai, then to South American countries such as Ecuador or Venezuela, according to authorities and immigration attorneys.

Guatemala has emerged as the key transit hub into Mexico. "The roundabout journeys are necessary because Mexico requires visas for Indians," the report added.

"They sneak across the dangerous Guatemala-Mexico border and take buses or private vehicles to the closest US-Mexico border. Mexican organised crime groups are suspected of being involved either in running the operations or in charging groups tolls to pass through their territory," it said.

http://articles.economictimes.indiatime ... der-patrol

This report apparently is lumping all immigrants together--legal as well as illegal. It is easy for me to believe that this is true of legal immigrants who come in on H1B visas and take high paying jobs from Americans because the employers want to pay less and have duped Congress into believing they MUST have these H1B people to meet their needs. I find it disgusting that American citizens are disrespected in this way.