The US Needs A Better Trained and Educated Immigrant

The Center for Immigration Studies has published a new profile on recent immigrants to the US. (thanks to Audacious Epigone) The profile presents important information on immigrants to the US and foreign-born residents residing within the US.

This Backgrounder provides a detailed picture of the number and socio-economic status of the nation’s immigrant or foreign-born population, both legal and illegal. The data was collected by the Census Bureau in March 2007.

• Among the report’s findings:
• The nation’s immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached a record of 37.9 million in 2007
• Immigrants account for one in eight U.S. residents, the highest level in 80 years. In 1970 it was one in 21; in 1980 it was one in 16; and in 1990 it was one in 13
• Overall, nearly one in three immigrants is an illegal alien. Half of Mexican and Central American immigrants and one-third of South American immigrants are illegal
• Since 2000, 10.3 million immigrants have arrived — the highest seven-year period of immigration in U.S. history. More than half of post-2000 arrivals (5.6 million) are estimated to be illegal aliens.
• The largest increases in immigrants were in California, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Arizona, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
• Of adult immigrants, 31 percent have not completed high school, compared to 8 percent of natives. Since 2000, immigration increased the number of workers without a high school diploma by 14 percent, and all other workers by 3 percent.
• The share of immigrants and natives who are college graduates is about the same. Immigrants were once much more likely than natives to be college graduates.
• The proportion of immigrant-headed households using at least one major welfare program is 33 percent, compared to 19 percent for native households.
• The poverty rate for immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) is 17 percent, nearly 50 percent higher than the rate for natives and their children.
• 34 percent of immigrants lack health insurance, compared to 13 percent of natives. Immigrants and their U.S.-born children account for 71 percent of the increase in the uninsured since 1989.
• Immigrants make significant progress over time. But even those who have been here for 20 years are more likely to be in poverty, lack insurance, or use welfare than are natives.
• The primary reason for the high rates of immigrant poverty, lack of health insurance, and welfare use is their low education levels, not their legal status or an unwillingness to work.
• Of immigrant households, 82 percent have at least one worker compared to 73 percent of native households.
• There is a worker present in 78 percent of immigrant households using at least one welfare program.
• Immigration accounts for virtually all of the national increase in public school enrollment over the last two decades. In 2007, there were 10.8 million school-age children from immigrant families in the United States.
• Immigrants and natives have similar rates of entrepreneurship — 13 percent of natives and 11 percent of immigrants are self-employed.
• Recent immigration has had no significant impact on the nation’s age structure. Without the 10.3 million post-2000 immigrants, the average age in America would be virtually unchanged at 36.5 years.

Source

Audacious Epigone created a "merit index" for countries of origin, based upon the status and performance of immigrants on six factors:

Using one or more welfare programs -- (.67)
Self-employed -- .55
Without health insurance -- (.53)
Less than a high school education -- (.51)
Bachelor's and beyond -- .60
In poverty -- (.49)

Based on those six factors, I've created a simple index to rate the top 25 nations from which our foreign-born population originates. The scores correlate with estimated IQ at .57, and .65 with India removed.

The non-Hispanic native white performance is set at 100. I gave equal weight to each of the factors, which probably inflates the numbers on education and underappreciates welfare use (or a lack thereof). Nonetheless, the rankings certainly have face validity:

Rank	Country of origin	Merit index
1.	India	145.6
2.	Japan	139.0
3.	Canada	133.2
4.	United Kingdom	128.1
5.	Germany	120.1
6.	Former USSR	108.3
7.	Philippines	108.0
8.	South Korea	103.0
9.	Iran	100.8
x	n-H White natives	100.0
10.	China	91.6
11.	Italy	84.9
12.	Poland	76.5
13.	Vietnam	54.9
14.	Colombia	54.8
15.	Peru	48.9
16.	Jamaica	43.4
17.	Brazil	30.6
18.	Cuba	26.0
x	Hispanic natives	21.8
19.	Haiti	15.3
x	Black natives	13.2
20.	Ecuador	(13.3)
21.	Dominican Republic	(54.5)
22.	El Salvador	(60.7)
23.	Honduras	(64.8)
24.	Guatemala	(85.0)
25.	Mexico	(87.7)

Source

Immigrants who are relatively uneducated and unskilled add tremendously to poverty rates and income disparity in the US. It is clear that merely legalising unskilled illegal immigrants will not solve the problem.

Instead, it is clear that the US should immediately take steps to reduce the accelerating inflow of unskilled and uneducated persons (wherever they may be from) and streamlining the process of legal acceptance of skilled, educated, and self-sufficient immigrants.

The disastrous performance of the US INS over the past few decades is a mere reflection of the decay in bureaucratic performance across the board in the US federal government. A simple reading of the CIS report, and a few moments reflection, should be enough to persuade intelligent readers that the US cannot afford this level of bureaucratic ineptitude to continue into the future.

Current hiring of US government workers is done via nepotism--racial, gender, and other social favoritism unrelated to worker competence. Since President Jimmy Carter outlawed the very useful testing procedures which helped assure competence in government workers, the performance of the US bureaucracy has crashed--with no conception within government circles as to what should be done to reverse the trend.

In the meantime, the US continues to fill with uneducated, unskilled, virtually untrainable populations with higher crime rates, who are thoroughly unprepared and unsuited for a high technological future. The welfare and criminal justice burden this adds to a thoroughly indebted government economy makes things much harder on the producing segment of society--those capable of reading and understanding such reports.

These trends are unsustainable over the long term. Perhaps North Americans (since Canada shares many of the same problems to a lesser extent) can take some comfort in knowing that Europe's demographic problems are made much worse by the violent Islamist nature of much of the immigration there. In addition, Europe has no history of large-scale assimilation of culturally diverse populations to match North America's history of assimilation.