- College-educated immigrants lag in jobs

College-educated immigrants lag in jobs

Austin American-Statesman - October 23, 2008

One out of every five college-educated immigrants is unemployed or working in an unskilled job.

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. But 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," study co-author Michael Fix said. Read More.