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Up for Grabs: The Gains and Prospects of First- and Second-Generation Young Adults
By Jeanne Batalova and Michael Fix
Youth and young adults from immigrant families represent one in four people in the United States between the ages of 16-26 and account for half of the growth of the young adult population between 1995 and 2010. This report profiles the nation’s 11.3 million first- and second-generation young adults, finding substantial generational progress in terms of high school graduation, college enrollment, and ability to earn family-sustaining wages. Second-generation Hispanic women are faring particularly well, with college enrollment rates equal to those of third-generation non-Hispanic white women. However, they are not graduating from college at the same rate or on the same timeline because of family, work, or economic reasons. The report sketches how postsecondary education, workforce development, and language training programs could better meet the needs of this population, which will assume a greater role as the US workforce ages.
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Immigration Policy and Less-Skilled Workers in the United States
By Harry J. Holzer
While broad consensus exists regarding the benefits of highly skilled immigration, the economic role of low-skilled immigrants remains in dispute. In this assessment of the research literature, the author makes an economics-based case for significant reform of the US immigration system. Among his suggestions for a more economically beneficial immigration system: Providing legal pathways for low-skilled workers, allowing less-skilled workers on employment-based visas to switch employers more easily and gain a path to citizenship, and setting employer visa fees at a level sufficient to offset some of the costs that low-skilled immigration imposes.
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Still an Hourglass? Immigrant Workers in Middle-Skilled Jobs
 By Randy Capps, Michael Fix, and Serena Yi Ying-Lin
It has been conventional wisdom that the immigrant workforce is shaped like an hourglass — wide at the top and the bottom but narrow in the middle. In reality, immigrants are more evenly dispersed across the skills spectrum than has been widely recognized. Using an innovative new method of analysis, the authors found that the fastest growth in immigrant employment since 2000 has occurred in middle-skilled jobs. The study, which examines employment in the US workforce and in four key sectors (IT, health care, construction, and hospitality), finds that employment growth for immigrants far outpaced native growth rates between 1990 and 2006 in the total economy and the four industries surveyed.
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The Impact of Immigrants in Recession and Economic Expansion
By Giovanni Peri
There is broad consensus among economists that immigration has a small but positive impact on the average income of Americans over the long term. But far less analysis has been done on the impact of immigrants on the labor market in the shorter term, particularly when viewed through the lens of the recession and its lingering labor market effects. This report finds that immigration unambiguously improves employment, productivity and income but that it also involves some short-term adjustments. These adjustments are more difficult during downturns, further underscoring the need for an immigration system that is more responsive to the economic cycle.
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The Economics and Policy of Illegal Immigration in the United States
By Gordon H. Hanson
Illegal immigration’s overall impact on the US economy is negligible, despite clear benefits for employers and unauthorized immigrants and slightly depressed wages for low-skilled native workers, according to this report by University of California, San Diego Professor of Economics Gordon Hanson for MPI's Labor Markets Initiative. The largest economic gains from illegal immigration flow to unauthorized workers, who see very substantial income hikes after migrating, Hanson says, suggesting that policy changes could increase the positive contribution that low-skilled workers make to the US economy by converting illegal flows to legal ones.
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Tied to the Business Cycle: How Immigrants Fare in Good and Bad Economic Times
By Pia M. Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny
Immigrants surpassed native-born workers in several key labor market outcomes from the mid-1990s through 2007, recording higher employment and lower jobless rates — but the trend was reversed with the onset of the current recession. The report, which analyzes employment and unemployment patterns over the past 15 years and two recessions, shows that immigrant economic outcomes began deteriorating before the current recession officially began in December 2007, tracing immigrants' declining fortunes largely to the housing bust which began in spring 2006.
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Taking
Limited English Proficient Adults into Account in the Federal
Adult Education Funding Formula
By Randy Capps, Michael Fix, Margie McHugh, and Serena Yi-Ying Lin
This new report by MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy
examines the funding formula used to distribute Workforce Investment Act (WIA)
Title II federal funds for adult education, literacy, and English as a Second
Language instruction. Though all adults with limited English proficiency (LEP)
are eligible for WIA Title II programs, the authors report that the formula used
to distribute $554 million to the states in fiscal 2009 excludes 11.2 million
LEP adults with at least a high school education. With WIA up for reauthorization,
the authors suggest there is an opportunity for policymakers to revisit the funding
formula and related issues.
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report
Immigrants
and the Current Economic Crisis
 By
Demetrios G. Papademetriou and Aaron Terrazas
As the nation sinks into a recession that may be the worst since the Great Depression,
the economic crisis raises fundamental questions about future immigration flows
to and from the United States and how current and prospective immigrants will
fare. This report, a research product of MPI's new Labor
Markets Initiative, examines how the number of immigrants has changed since
the recession began; how legal and illegal immigration flows may change; and
how immigrants fare in the labor market during downturns.
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Report | Press
Release
More on the Labor Markets Initiative here
Uneven
Progress: The Employment Pathways of Skilled Immigrants in
the United States
 By
Jeanne Batalova and Michael Fix with Peter
A. Creticos
More than 1.3 million college-educated immigrants
in the United States are unemployed or working
in unskilled jobs because they are unable to
make full use of their academic and professional
credentials, MPI reports in the first assessment yet of the scope
of the “brain waste” problem. The report analyzes
and offers possible solutions for the credentialing and language-barrier
hurdles that deprive the US economy of a rich source of human
capital at a time of increasing competition globally for skilled
talent.
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Report | Press
Release |
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Gambling
on the Future: Managing the Education Challenges of Rapid
Growth in Nevada
 By
Aaron Terrazas and Michael Fix
October 2008
Nevada, the fastest growing state in the United States, is
experiencing a population boom – driven in part by
immigration – that has key implications for its school
system and labor market. Immigrants represent one in five
Nevada residents and their children account for one in three
Nevadans under age 18. Yet even as schools have experienced
a surge in enrollment, federal and state investments in the
state's failing education system haven't kept pace.
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Report | Press
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Los
Angeles on the Leading Edge: Immigrant Integration Indicators
and Their Policy Implications
By Michael Fix, Margie McHugh, Aaron Matteo Terrazas, and Laureen Laglagaron
April 2008
As Los Angeles makes the transition from being a city of immigrants to one dominated
by their US-born children, it can serve as a policy laboratory for other cities
facing the need to better integrate immigrants into US classrooms, workplaces,
and civic life. MPI’s report details the imperative for integration policies
that will benefit immigrants and the broader US society alike.
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Report | Press
Release
Improving Immigrant Workers’ Economic Prospects:
A Review of the Literature
By Amy Beeler and Julie Murray
Securing the Future:
US Immigrant Integration Policy, A Reader
February 2007
The
Impact of Immigration on Native Workers: A Fresh Look at
the Evidence
By Julie Murray, Jeanne Batalova, and Michael Fix
Task Force Insight No. 18, July 2006
College-Educated
Foreign Born in the US Labor Force
By Jeanne Batalova
Migration Information Source, February 2005
The
Foreign Born in the US Labor Force
By Elizabeth Grieco, Fact Sheet, January 2004
What
Kind of Work Do Immigrants Do?
Occupation and Industry of Foreign-Born Workers
in the US
By Elizabeth Grieco, Fact Sheet, January 2004
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