College Immigrants In The USA: Article Analysis

In the article College Immigrants in the United States, written by Jie Zong, and Jeanne Batalova, spoke about the amount of Immigrants looking for higher education in the United States. The articles leads the discussion of with this statement. “In 2014, 10.5 million immigrants had a college degree or higher, representing about 29 percent of the total 36.7 million U.S. foreign-born population ages 25 and over”(Zong, Batalova). This fact puts the reader into perspective about how many students are immigrants into the U.S, to look for a higher education and ultimately making a better life for themselves, giving them opportunities that they wouldn’t have in their resident country. They state how this influx started to take place when the Immigration
act of 1990 was put into action. This allowed migrants to come to the United States to have a higher education giving them more opportunities than they would have in their home country. This act caused there to be an influx of foreign born college students to more than twice the rate of that native born in the U.S. This article brings into perspective the how many countries are having their people migrate to the U.S to look for a better life for themselves.

The book Exodus, by Paul Collier, discusses how immigration across the world affects, economics, education, and population negatively and/or positively depending on a country's individual situation.
For uneducated and low income immigrants the opportunity for education is one of the few ways to escape poverty. Collier explains Haiti's struggle as, “Haiti is estimated to have been one of the biggest overall losers: it has around 130,000 fewer educated workers than it would have had without immigration”(200). Haiti is an example of a place where people who obtained an education were able to migrate to more developed countries. This caused Haiti to suffer due the majority of population having little to no education. When educated immigrants move to developed countries it creates greater competition for employment. Education and economics coincide with each other when there are limited employment opportunities for educated immigrants. limited job opportunities hurts an economy especially when immigrants send money to their families in their home countries and not spending it in their current market. Collier illustrates this problem, “The clearest beneficial effect should be in the labor market: with fewer workers competing for jobs, the earning of those who stay home should get higher”(213). The shifts in population affect both the developing and developed places but how they impact a place cannot be generalized; each city, town, or location is impacted
differently.

After reading this article and reading the chapter nine of Exodus by Paul Collier, it has proven Collier’s idea of migrants leaving their home countries to find higher education which takes away skilled workers from their home country.
Seeing statistics from these authors puts into perspective how many countries have people looking for a sense of higher education, and coming to the realization that their home countries can’t provide for them. So with the immigration act of 1990 put into place people migrated to gain the opportunity for higher education. In my opinion there are kind of wins and loses to this whole idea if you will. Agreeing with Zakaria using Haiti as an example (a very poor country) migration from their home to other countries to find higher education puts “Haiti” out of skilled workers. Workers that could really help turn their countries. As according to the article most of the immigrants in the U.S are picking majors like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In my opinion taking people with skills like that away from a poor country will do nothing to help their country. On the other side to the argument the immigrants that are coming into the U.S are making a better life for themselves, and most tend to give at least 6% of their yearly earnings to their home country. So in my personal opinion I think after migrants get an education at the U.S or any other richer country, that they should go back to their home countries to help their
economical situation.