Highly skilled immigrants now outnumber low-skilled ones.

[pampango]

Highly skilled temporary and permanent immigrants in the United States now outnumber lower-skilled ones, marking a dramatic shift in the foreign-born workforce that could have profound political and economic implications in the national debate over immigration. This shift in America’s immigration population, based on census data, is summarized in a report released Thursday by the Brookings Institution. It found that 30 percent of the country’s working-age immigrants, regardless of legal status, have at least a bachelor’s degree, while 28 percent lack a high school diploma.

The trend reflects a fundamental change in the structure and demands of the U.S. economy, which in the past decades transformed from an economy driven by manufacturing to one driven by information and technology. The report also offers a new perspective on the national immigration discourse, which tends to fixate on low-skilled, and often illegal, workers.

“Too often the immigration debate is driven by images on television of people jumping over fences,” said Benjamin Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy organization. “The debate has been stuck in the idea that it’s all about illegal and low-skilled workers.”

Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that advocates for tighter immigration restrictions, said the report raises other concerns. “It seems, based on this and other studies, that we’ve got an oversupply of highly skilled workers coming into this country,” he said, adding that the study’s findings were not surprising. “New college graduates are faring very poorly on the labor market, and what the report is telling us is that we’re bringing in a high number of workers to compete with them.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/report-documents-dramatic-shift-in-immigrant-workforces-skill-level/2011/06/08/AGHqthMH_story.html

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[Horse with no Name]

2. First of all...let's put THIS disclaimer out there front and center

http://www.splcenter.org/publications/the-nativist-lobby-three-faces-of-intolerance/cis-the-independent-think-tank

>>>snip
CIS makes much of its mainstream credentials, saying it seeks "to expand the base of public knowledge" in an effort to show the need for immigration policies that serve "the broad national interest." And indeed, CIS' website shows that it has testified to Congress close to 100 times since Krikorian took over in 1995.

But the history of CIS make clear that it has always been part of a broad-based and well-planned effort to attack immigration in all forms. CIS Senior Policy Analyst Stephen Steinlight pretty much captured CIS' brand of "independent" analysis when he told the Inter Press Service News Agency in 2005 that immigration threatens "the American people as a whole and the future of Western civilization."

That is the real idea that lies behind CIS' worldview, even if CIS founder Tanton — who once warned of the "deadly disunity" that immigration was bringing to America — says it more clearly than most of CIS' officials today. It is much the same idea that has animated nativist extremists for centuries: the fear that Americans will be overwhelmed by foreigners who wreck the U.S. culture and economy. - Heidi Beirich


And then we can attack the report and say...that this is nothing but another tool to blame the job market on "illegals" instead of putting the blame where it belongs...unbridled corporatism and offshoring of jobs.

[Kolesar]

3. good catch eom

[pinboy3niner]

4. SPLC nails the "Center for Immigration Studies"

.... Although you'd never know it to read its materials, CIS was started in 1985 by a Michigan ophthalmologist named John Tanton — a man known for his racist statements about Latinos, his decades-long flirtation with white nationalists and Holocaust deniers, and his publication of ugly racist materials. CIS' creation was part of a carefully thought-out strategy aimed at creating a set of complementary institutions to cultivate the nativist cause — groups including the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and NumbersUSA. As is shown in Tanton's correspondence, lodged in the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Tanton came up with the idea in the early 1980s for "a small think tank" that would "wage the war of ideas."

http://www.splcenter.org/publications/the-nativist-lobby-three-faces-of-intolerance/cis-the-independent-think-tank