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November 8, 2008
McALLEN - Foreign-born college graduates are far more likely to be unemployed or have unskilled jobs than their native-born counterparts, a new study has found.
The study, led by researchers at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., found that out of 6.1 million immigrants with at least a bachelor's degree, 22 percent are either unemployed or work as customer service representatives, security guards and janitors.
The researchers also found that immigrants from Latin America and Africa have less luck finding skilled jobs, as defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, than those from Europe and Asia.
The findings don't surprise Rene Zúñiga, an education professor at South Texas College who previously worked at a maquiladora in Mexico.
"A degree doesn't count here a lot of the time," he said, explaining that some college credits from foreign countries don't transfer to the U.S. education system.
That may be why immigrants with degrees obtained in the United States fare better than those with degrees from abroad.
"There's also language," Zúñiga said, pointing out another challenge facing foreign-educated college grads. "A lot of times they can't speak English very well."
The report, which examined immigrants ages 25 and older, found that English language proficiency is critical to obtaining jobs for skilled immigrants and that many of them face a sharp drop in occupational status when first entering the United States.
Still, most immigrants would probably rather work unskilled jobs in the United States than work skilled jobs in countries like Mexico, Zúñiga said.
"I knew engineers (in Mexico) making only $500 a month," he said. "Here, they can work doing something unskilled and earn much more than that."
The study is the first to quantify the trend's scope, MPI spokeswoman Michelle Mittelstadt said.
"People have been recognizing brain waste for years," she said. "This is the first time people put numbers to it."
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