What % of US immigration is of high skilled people?

[rob in cal]

   All the current discussion of immigration reform has got me thinking about the issue of low skilled vs high skilled immigration into the US.  Has anyone done a study of what  % of current legal immigrants would be considered high skilled? What medium skilled? Low skilled? How about current illegal immigration?  My guess is that legal immigration would have a much higher % of high skilled immigrants than illegal. 
    Also, by and large should US immigration policy be for pretty much only, by and large, high skilled people?

[King]

We need more young people.  Skill is unimportant.  Actually, low skill may be preferred.  The biggest problem facing this country in the future is lack of payroll tax revenue for the baby boomers' Medicare and Social Security benefits.

Low skilled immigrants are young, produce large families, and will go for wage jobs where they pay FICA as opposed to be becoming an entrepreneur who does not.  They're also less likely to save instead of spend their money.

[Torie]

Good question!  I would like to see some figures on this. But whatever the figure is, I have no doubt I will find it too low.

[memphis]

Probably worth pointing out that the US has historically gone for the hard worker over the skilled worker. Teeming masses and whatnot. That's who made this country.

[Linus Van Pelt]

The federal government publishes an annual "Yearbook of Immigration Statistics" which includes the following table of the admissions category for new permanent residents in each of the past three years. The data cover only legal permanent residents (i.e. green card holders). They exclude illegal immigration and temporary nonimmigrant visas, though they do include status adjusters as well as newcomers, so those who first arrive as students, H1-B's, refugees, etc., and then decide to stay and get a green card are included in the year they adjust to permanent.

[Torie]

Probably worth pointing out that the US has historically gone for the hard worker over the skilled worker. Teeming masses and whatnot. That's who made this country.

Those teeming masses tended to be the cream of the crop of those masses in the places from which they came. That was why, for example,  New England in the 19th century had the highest literacy rate in the world - going away.

[memphis]

Probably worth pointing out that the US has historically gone for the hard worker over the skilled worker. Teeming masses and whatnot. That's who made this country.

Those teeming masses tended to be the cream of the crop of those masses in the places from which they came.

This is not true at all. Aristocrats tend to stay where they are. Not many members of the House of Lords made it over here. The Puritans in New England were very much an exceptional case in that they did not come over because they were starving to death in the old country. And by the 19th Century, New England was already overrun by the Irish, who were anything but the cream of the crop where they came from. Indentured Scotch-Irish servants, African slaves, Chinese railroad workers, Scandinavian peasants, and Jews from the Pale of Settlement are the furthest you could get from the "cream of the crop."

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The federal government publishes an annual "Yearbook of Immigration Statistics" which includes the following table of the admissions category for new permanent residents in each of the past three years. The data cover only legal permanent residents (i.e. green card holders). They exclude illegal immigration and temporary nonimmigrant visas, though they do include status adjusters as well as newcomers, so those who first arrive as students, H1-B's, refugees, etc., and then decide to stay and get a green card are included in the year they adjust to permanent.

So those who get a visa for employment/skill reasons total only 14%. Hopefully they are more skilled than the average H-1B holder. That visa mainly exists to drive down wages for Americans.

[LastVoter]

The upper middle classes emigrated to US. In more favorable cases even upper classes(successful revolutions in Europe).

[Lambsbread]

Probably worth pointing out that the US has historically gone for the hard worker over the skilled worker. Teeming masses and whatnot. That's who made this country.

Yeah, this.

[rob in cal]

   Thanks for posting that chart head beagle.  It looks like the type of immigration which is most helpful to the US in terms of the economy, unemployment etc, the high skilled, and investors, is pretty low, and the family reunification part is really big.  Obviously some of that family reunification would be related to those very same investors and high skilled immigrants, but I'm guessing that lots of it isn't.

[Torie]

The upper middle classes emigrated to US. In more favorable cases even upper classes(successful revolutions in Europe).

E.g., the German 48'ers (and all those bourgeoise folks fleeing the Commies). As to the potato famine Irish, the controversial Banfield, in the Unheavenly City, claimed that their blood lines largely died out (not much of a social safety net then, particularly for the loathed and the damned). The Irish we have today, asserted he, came starting in the 1850's (that decade that had the highest percentage of immigrant arrivals to total population of any decade in US history, including recent ones, and which tipped the balance of power against the South since nearly all of them settled north of the Mason Dixon Line (the South seceded too late as it were to get away with it).

[King]

Probably worth pointing out that the US has historically gone for the hard worker over the skilled worker. Teeming masses and whatnot. That's who made this country.

Those teeming masses tended to be the cream of the crop of those masses in the places from which they came. That was why, for example,  New England in the 19th century had the highest literacy rate in the world - going away.

New England's literacy success came from the local governments' response to the immigrants, not from the nature of the immigrants themselves.  First generation immigrants were generally just as low skilled and illiterate as illegals are today.  It was the huge influx in public education in hopes of speeding up the assimilation process which made it work.

[King]

It should also be noted that, by today's immigration standards, Ellis Island was essentially a huge illegal immigrant amnesty program.  Everyone who showed jumped on a ship without any guarantees, no filing of paperwork beforehand, and no citizenship tests, and we forgave them as soon as they touched on shore. 

[memphis]

It should also be noted that, by today's immigration standards, Ellis Island was essentially a huge illegal immigrant amnesty program.  Everyone who showed jumped on a ship without any guarantees, no filing of paperwork beforehand, and no citizenship tests, and we forgave them as soon as they touched on shore. 

There were very few immigration laws back then. You didn't even need a passport. With the caveat that you could not be sick or Chinese.

[King]

It should also be noted that, by today's immigration standards, Ellis Island was essentially a huge illegal immigrant amnesty program.  Everyone who showed jumped on a ship without any guarantees, no filing of paperwork beforehand, and no citizenship tests, and we forgave them as soon as they touched on shore. 

There were very few immigration laws back then. You didn't even need a passport. With the caveat that you could not be sick or Chinese.

And it didn't have as many problems as the current system.

If we want to fix the immigration system in this country, we need to make it far easier to become a citizen, much as it was back then, that way the only people who would immigrate illegally were true criminals and not those trapped in bureaucracy.

Build a wall along Mexican border, if we must, but also have major ports where same day immigration can be achieved.  Ellis Islands on land in Laredo, El Paso, Columbus, Nogales, and San Diego.  They arrive in the morning, basic background checks are performed, and if clear they are United States citizens before sunset.  If such an option were available, no good impoverished Mexican seeking a better life would ever choose paying the cartel to smuggle or breaking the law jumping the wall.  Only truly undesired people would carry the tag illegal alien.

[Torie]

Probably worth pointing out that the US has historically gone for the hard worker over the skilled worker. Teeming masses and whatnot. That's who made this country.

Those teeming masses tended to be the cream of the crop of those masses in the places from which they came. That was why, for example,  New England in the 19th century had the highest literacy rate in the world - going away.

New England's literacy success came from the local governments' response to the immigrants, not from the nature of the immigrants themselves.  First generation immigrants were generally just as low skilled and illiterate as illegals are today.  It was the huge influx in public education in hopes of speeding up the assimilation process which made it work.

You might check this out. My impression was that the rates were high because the immigrants were dissenters (a big percentage from East Anglica) who read the Bible. Sure as my link indicates, then public schools were pushed by the Yankees facing the new influx. One thing leads to another, and the Yankees did the same thing all over the Yankee diaspora through the northern parts of Ohio, Illinois and Indiana, Michigan, and Iowa -with small colleges still heavily dotted over the landscape that have been there since the 19th century. My grandparents went to one of those schools, Simpson College in Iowa, following George Washington Carver whom my great grandmother nursed back to health over a summer, and then helped to arrange his admission there.

[King]

Probably worth pointing out that the US has historically gone for the hard worker over the skilled worker. Teeming masses and whatnot. That's who made this country.

Those teeming masses tended to be the cream of the crop of those masses in the places from which they came. That was why, for example,  New England in the 19th century had the highest literacy rate in the world - going away.

New England's literacy success came from the local governments' response to the immigrants, not from the nature of the immigrants themselves.  First generation immigrants were generally just as low skilled and illiterate as illegals are today.  It was the huge influx in public education in hopes of speeding up the assimilation process which made it work.

You might check this out. My impression was that the rates were high because the immigrants were dissenters (a big percentage from East Anglica) who read the Bible. Sure as my link indicates, then public schools were pushed by the Yankees facing the new influx. One thing leads to another, and the Yankees did the same thing all over the Yankee diaspora through the northern parts of Ohio, Illinois and Indiana, Michigan, and Iowa -with small colleges still heavily dotted over the landscape that have been there since the 19th century. My grandparents went to one of those schools, Simpson College in Iowa, following George Washington Carver whom my great grandmother nursed back to health over a summer, and then helped to arrange his admission there.

If the Protestant Reformation happened in the 1800s, maybe, but I don't see the 19th century as a time when people fleeing Europe would be more likely to read than Bible than those who stayed in the homeland.  It also doesn't explain the Irish Catholics.  There were plenty of non-Biblical things to read as well.

New England pioneered compulsory public education.  That's what made the difference and that's all.  We were the first to educate poor people.  The first to make farmers send their kids to school as opposed to just the urban upper class kids.  Other nations did not do this and those nations fell behind.

[Sbane]

The federal government publishes an annual "Yearbook of Immigration Statistics" which includes the following table of the admissions category for new permanent residents in each of the past three years. The data cover only legal permanent residents (i.e. green card holders). They exclude illegal immigration and temporary nonimmigrant visas, though they do include status adjusters as well as newcomers, so those who first arrive as students, H1-B's, refugees, etc., and then decide to stay and get a green card are included in the year they adjust to permanent.

So those who get a visa for employment/skill reasons total only 14%. Hopefully they are more skilled than the average H-1B holder. That visa mainly exists to drive down wages for Americans.

You can only get a H-1B visa if you are sponsored by a company. Usually for employment reasons because not a lot of companies run charity services to bring people into this country. That 14% are the H-1B visa holders. Processing that costs time and money and companies only do that for for people that they absolutely need. I am sorry that you have failed at life, but I would recommend not directing that anger towards H-1B visa holders. Thanks!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Jfern is one of the forum's more random racists, remember.

[Sbane]

Jfern is one of the forum's more random racists, remember.

I remember.