A new
report from the Pew Research Center provides confirmation that immigration
in the U.S. is not quite as simple as some political candidates would have
voters believe.
Among their findings: There are two
great immigrant streams — the largely unskilled or underskilled that so
obsesses Republican candidates like Donald Trump, and the educated professional
and semi-professional. The first group is less educated than people born in the
U.S. — at least at first — but the latter group is on average better
educated.
The latter group is seldom talked
about outside corporate HR suites. In 2006 nearly 2 of every 5 college
graduates entering the Illinois labor force were foreign-born, according to a
study by consultants Rob Paral and Associates. Remember that big companies look
to the quality of labor as probably the biggest single factor with
transportation when making location decisions, and imagine all those
foreign-borns were no longer part of it.
Pew suggests that education levels
are rising in part because more immigrants these days are Asian or members of
the rising college-trained Mexican middle class. The actual face of immigration
is a place like Springfield, therefore, is not only those of the bus boys at
local taquerias, but the staffs of local hospitals and universities and
engineering firms.
Just out of curiosity, I looked up the Memorial
Medical Center’s physician roster. These are among just the “A’s:” Tamer
Abdelhak, Leslie Acakpo-Satchivi, Akindele
A. Adaramola, Bhavani Adusumilli, Edem S. Agamah, Vikas Aggarwal, Melissa M.
Agoudemos, Aqeel Ahmad, Faraz Ahmad, Shaheen Riadh Alanee, Ashraf Al-Dadah,
Mohamad N. Alhosaini and Hamid Al-Johany.
This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2015.
