During Biden Term, Fewer Educated Immigrants Came to US

February 19, 2025 10:54 am

During the term of former U.S. President Joe Biden, the steady improvement in the educational level of new adult immigrants, which began around 2004, reversed.

These are according to findings that the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) published Thursday.

“As the share of newcomers who are from Latin America increased, the percentage of new arrivals with a bachelor’s fell from 46 to 41 percent from 2018 to 2024, while the share with no education beyond high school increased from 36 percent to 46 percent over the same time period,” according to the CIS report.

“The deterioration in the education level of new immigrants was caused entirely by the dramatic increase in the arrival of immigrants with very modest levels of education.”

Among the CIS findings:

• Compared to 2018, the number of adult newcomers with a high school diploma or less increased by 103 percent, while the number with at least a bachelor’s increased by “only” 44 percent.

• In 2024, for the first time in more than a decade, new adult immigrants with no education beyond high school outnumbered those with at least a bachelor’s.

• The increase in immigration has been almost entirely driven by an increase in new arrivals from Latin America. The overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants are from this region.

• Immigrants from Latin America to the United States tend to be the least-educated compared to immigrants from other regions.

“The significant falloff in the education level of immigrants is profoundly important because there is no single better predictor of how immigrants will do in the modern American economy than their educational level at arrival. This includes income, poverty rates, use of social services, tax contributions, and many other measures of socio-economic status,” the CIS report said of the Biden years.

“Of course, many new immigrants are very skilled and can be expected to prosper in the United States. Moreover, the earnings of immigrants with modest levels of education should still increase over time. That said, in 2024 new arrivals were much more numerous, less educated, and poorer than prior entering cohorts.”

IN THE NEWS: I Swear, These Entitled D.C. Bureaucrats Make Me Want to SCREAM!!!

During the past three years, more than 3.5 million low-income immigrants have settled in the United States, the CIS said.

“Adding so many low-income residents will create significant challenges for the United States,” the CIS said.

“Further, allowing in so many less-educated immigrants significantly increases job competition for less-educated U.S.-born workers and legal immigrants already here. Halting this trend should be an important goal of the Trump administration. Sending illegal immigrants back to their home countries would also avoid the challenges a much larger low-income population would create for the country.”

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