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Beverly Hills, California, United States
Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Wednesday, October 07, 2015

New U.S. Immigrants are the Best Educated—Ever

National Journal
By Richard Fry
October 6, 2015

The im­mig­rants who have re­cently come to the United States are the most highly edu­cated in his­tory. A Pew Re­search Cen­ter ana­lys­is of U.S. Census Bur­eau data shows that 41 per­cent of im­mig­rants ar­riv­ing in the past five years had com­pleted at least a bach­el­or’s de­gree. By com­par­is­on, only 20 per­cent of newly ar­rived im­mig­rants in 1970 were sim­il­arly edu­cated.

Edu­ca­tion­al at­tain­ment has also ris­en over the past 50 years for adults born in the U.S. For ex­ample, in 2013, 3 in 10 U.S.-born adults had com­pleted at least a bach­el­or’s de­gree, triple the share of U.S.-born adults that had done the same in 1970.

But newly ar­rived im­mig­rants re­main more likely than the U.S. born to have earned a de­gree, and that gap is now at its biggest since 1970. In that year, new ar­rivals had an ad­vant­age of 9 per­cent­age points over U.S.-born adults in the share com­plet­ing a bach­el­or’s de­gree (20 per­cent versus 11 per­cent). That ad­vant­age nar­rowed to 6 points in 1990. But the ad­vant­age in col­lege com­ple­tion held by re­cently ar­rived im­mig­rants has since widened, to about 12 points as of 2013 (41 per­cent versus 30 per­cent).

On the oth­er end of the edu­ca­tion spec­trum, al­most a quarter (23 per­cent) of today’s new ar­rivals have not com­pleted high school. Even so, it’s an im­prove­ment over 1970, when half of newly ar­rived im­mig­rants had not fin­ished high school.

How the GOP should respond to a rapidly changing country has become the central issue in the volatile Republican presidential race.

The gap in high school com­ple­tion between im­mig­rant ar­rivals and U.S.-born adults widened un­til about 2000, but it has since nar­rowed. About 65 per­cent of those im­mig­rants ar­riv­ing with­in five years of 2000 had at least fin­ished high school. That com­pares with 83 per­cent of U.S.-born adults in 2000 who had fin­ished high school—a gap of about 18 points. But as of 2013, the gap has nar­rowed to 13 points.

The im­proved edu­ca­tion­al pro­file of re­cent ar­rivals that has quickened in the new cen­tury is likely due to sev­er­al factors. First, im­mig­rant ar­rivals from Asia—now the re­gion send­ing the most new im­mig­rants to the U.S.—tend to be very well edu­cated, with some 57 per­cent of them hold­ing at least a bach­el­or’s de­gree in 2013.


Im­mig­rant ar­rivals from Cent­ral and South Amer­ica tend to be less edu­cated. But the num­ber of im­mig­rants com­ing from those re­gions has sharply de­clined from 2000 to 2013, while the num­ber of im­mig­rants from Asia has been on the rise.

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com

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