Recent Illegals 'Smarter' than
Previous Crossers

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44794

Study says new 'unauthorized immigrants' have more high school, college education

Posted: June 15, 2005
5:00 p.m. Eastern
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

A current commercial campaign for Geico insurance depicts modern-day cavemen who get offended when people assume they're uneducated.

A similar theme could hold true when it comes to illegal aliens, according to a new study.

Contrary to the stereotype of undocumented migrants as single males with very little education who perform manual labor in agriculture or construction, the Pew Hispanic Center report shows that most of the illegal population lives in families, a quarter has at least some college education and that illegal workers can be found in many sectors of the U.S. economy.

"Not all of the unauthorized population fits the stereotype of a poorly educated manual laborer," demographer Jeffrey Passel, the report's author, said.

One of the key findings of the report is that the most recent illegals have a higher education level than those who have been in America for at least a decade.

"The share who lack a high school degree is lower among those who have been in the United States for 10 years or less than among those of longer tenure – 45 percent vs. 56 percent – and the share with some college education is higher – 19 percent vs. 10 percent," according to the report.

But overall, "unauthorized migrants," as Pew calls them, are less educated than other sectors of the American population with 49 percent having not completed high school, compared with 9 percent of the native-born and 25 percent of legal immigrants.

Some of the report's other findings include:

·  Since the mid-1990s, the number of illegal aliens arriving in the United States has exceeded the number of new legal immigrants. In recent years some 700,000 unauthorized migrants have arrived annually, compared with about 610,000 legal immigrants.

·  Labor-force participation rates are higher among male unauthorized migrants – 92 percent – than in other sectors of the population (e.g. 83 percent of the native-born). In contrast, female illegals are less likely to work, with a labor-force participation rate of 56 percent compared with 73 percent of the native-born.

·  Unauthorized workers make up a large share of the workforce in a number of occupations that require neither government licensing nor education credentials. For example, about a quarter of all drywall and ceiling tile installers in the U.S. are illegal migrants, as are about a quarter of all meat and poultry workers and a quarter of all dishwashers.

·  Incomes for illegals are low compared to legal immigrants and the native-born, but they increase somewhat the longer an individual is in the country. The average family income in 2003 for unauthorized migrants in the country for less than ten years was $25,700, while those who had been in the country for a decade or more earned $29,900. In contrast, average family incomes were considerably higher for both legal immigrants ($47,800) and the native-born ($47,700).

A Pew report issued in March said the undocumented population in the U.S. has reached nearly 11 million, including more than 6 million Mexicans.

It stated about 80 to 85 percent of the migration from Mexico in recent years has been undocumented, and Arizona and North Carolina are now among the states with the largest numbers of undocumented migrants.