Immigrants’ educations go unused, study finds

WASHINGTON – One out of every five college-educated immigrants in the United States is either unemployed or working in an unskilled job such as a dishwasher, fast food restaurant cashier or security guard, depriving the U.S. economy of the full potential of more than 1.3 million foreign-born workers, according to a study released Wednesday.

The plight of such immigrants is familiar to anyone who has gotten a ride from a taxi driver with an engineering degree from Ethiopia or had their car parked by a garage attendant who used to practice law in El Salvador. However, the report by the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute is the first to quantify the extent of the problem.

“This shows that immigrant brain waste is a reality, that the challenge of integration is not restricted to unskilled workers, who have been the focus until now, and that a very high share of highly skilled immigrants are not progressing rapidly in the economy,” said researcher Michael Fix, who co-authored the study with Jeanne Batalova.

Of particular concern, added Fix, was the finding that highly educated Latin American and African immigrants fare far worse than Europeans or Asians. Nearly half of recently arrived college-educated Latin Americans hold unskilled jobs. So do more than one-third of those who have been in the country for more than 10 years and have presumably had more time to learn English, make professional contacts and pass U.S. professional certification exams. And the lag persists even when only immigrants who are in the country legally are considered.

By contrast, well-educated European immigrants’ employment patterns are virtually indistinguishable from their U.S.-born counterparts, regardless of how long they have lived in the United States. Asian immigrants educated abroad do only slightly worse.

Though African immigrants are more likely to hold highly skilled jobs than Latin Americans, they have the highest unemployment rates of all foreign-born groups. During the 2005-2006 period, 6 percent of recently arrived, college-educated Africans and 4.1 percent of Africans with a U.S. degree were unemployed, compared with 2.6 percent of U.S.-born college graduates.

Fix said it’s possible that discrimination against Latinos and Africans is a factor but that much of the gap can be explained by the differing language skills and immigration circumstances common to immigrants from each region.

For instance, highly skilled immigrants who can speak only limited English are twice as likely to work in an unskilled job as those who are proficient in English. And 44 percent of Latin Americans educated at foreign colleges speak English poorly or not at all compared with 32 percent of Europeans and 23 percent of Asians.

College-educated Africans have the best language skills of any group: Only 15 percent speak English poorly or not at all. But it appears that this benefit is swamped by a different disadvantage: Only 10 percent of the Africans are sponsored for entry by employers. Instead 42 percent are sponsored by family members and nearly a third come in through a government lottery program. And immigrants entering on such visas often lack the professional networks needed to find a job in their field.

This is also a challenge for college-educated Latin Americans, who are the least likely to be sponsored by employers – with only 6 percent receiving such visas compared with 16 percent of Europeans and 35 percent of Asians.