W*****B
发帖数: 4796 | 1 你们这些无知的种族主义者。人家非洲人国民素质和教育程度比你们小黄人不知高到哪
里去了。你们小黄人跟着床铺管人家叫垃圾？快好好反省下自己！
African immigrants are more educated than most — including people born in U
.S.
Lots of the news from sub-Saharan Africa is about war, famine, poverty or
political upheaval. So it’s understandable if many Americans think most
Africans who immigrate to the United States are poorly educated and
desperate.
That’s the impression that President Trump left with his comments to
members of Congress opposing admission of immigrants from “shithole
countries” in Africa and elsewhere.
But research tells another story.
While many are refugees, large numbers are beneficiaries of the “diversity
visa program” aimed at boosting immigration from underrepresented nations.
And on average, African immigrants are better educated that people born in
the U.S. or the immigrant population as a whole.
“It’s a population that’s very diverse in its educational, economic and
English proficiency profile,” said Jeanne Batalova, a senior policy analyst
at the Migration Policy Institute think tank in Washington and coauthor of
a report last year on sub-Saharan African immigrants in the U.S. “People
came for a variety of reasons and at various times.”
Overall, their numbers are small compared with other immigrant groups but
have risen significantly in recent years. The U.S. immigrant population from
sub-Saharan Africa (49 countries with a total population of more than 1.1
billion) grew from 723,000 to more than 1.7 million between 2010 and 2015,
according to a new report by New American Economy, a Washington-based
research and advocacy group. Still, they make up just half a percent of the
U.S. population.
Drawing from U.S. surveys and Census Bureau data, the report found that the
majority come from five countries: Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia and South
Africa.
The Pew Research Center reported that African immigrants are most likely to
settle in the South or Northeast, and that the largest numbers — at least
100,000 — are found in Texas, New York, California, Maryland, New Jersey,
Massachusetts and Virginia. Many African refugees have also relocated to or
have been resettled in states such as Minnesota and South Dakota.
The Refugee Act of 1980 made it easier for people fleeing war zones to
resettle in the U.S., and today there are tens of thousand of refugees from
Somalia, Sudan and Congo. About 22% of African immigrants are refugees,
according to Andrew Lim, associate director of research at New American
Economy.
At the same time, the diversity visa program — also known as the visa
lottery — has opened the door to immigrants from more peaceful places. Of
the sub-Saharan immigrants who have become legal permanent residents, 17%
came through the program, compared with 5% of the total U.S. immigrant
population, according to Batalova.
Applicants to the program must have completed the equivalent of a U.S. high
school education or have at least two years of recent experience in any
number of occupations, including accountant, computer support specialist,
orthodontist and dancer.
As a result, the influx includes many immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa who
are highly skilled professionals.
Batalova’s research found that of the 1.4 million who are 25 and older, 41%
have a bachelor’s degree, compared with 30% of all immigrants and 32% of
the U.S.-born population. Of the 19,000 U.S. immigrants from Norway — a
country Trump reportedly told lawmakers is a good source of immigrants — 38
% have college educations.
The New American Economy study found that 1 in 3 of these undergraduate
degrees were focused on science, technology, engineering and math — “
training heavily in demand by today’s employers.”
That report also found that African immigrants were significantly more
likely to have graduate degrees. A total of 16% had a master’s degree,
medical degree, law degree or a doctorate, compared with 11% of the U.S.-
born population, Lim said.
African immigrants were more than twice as likely than the U.S. population
overall to work in healthcare, Lim said. There are more than 32,500 nursing,
psychiatric or home health aides, more than 46,000 registered nurses and
more than 15,700 doctors and surgeons.
“Overwhelmingly the evidence shows that [African immigrants] make a
significant, positive economic contribution to the U.S. economy,” both at a
national level and in districts where they are concentrated, Lim said. “
They contribute more than $10.1 billion in federal taxes, $4.7 billion in
state and local taxes, and most importantly, they have significant economic
clout to the point of $40.3 billion in spending power.”
That $40.3 billion pays for housing, transportation, consumer goods and
education for their children — “things that actually stimulate the economy
around them,” Lim said.
The biggest beneficiary is Texas, where their spending power is $4.7 billion
, followed by California, Maryland, New York and Georgia.
“It’s a population that leverages its human resources and contributes to
the U.S. economy by revitalizing communities, starting businesses, but also
by working in a variety of professional fields,” Batalova said.
Even those with less education who arrive as refugees often fill certain
lower-skill niches in healthcare, such as home health aides, researchers
said.
“In the communities they were resettled in, they have made significant
contributions,” Lim said.
In many towns and cities in the Great Lakes area of the Midwest, for example
, they have started new businesses, infused local labor forces with younger
workers, and expanded local tax bases, Lim said.
A report last year by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and
Medicine found that immigrants in general had little to no negative effect
on overall wages or employment levels for U.S.-born workers, and higher-
skilled immigrants in fields such as technology and science had a positive
influence on the U.S. labor force.
Still, supporters of stricter immigration policy back the Trump
administration’s calls to end the visa lottery as well as programs that
allow certain immigrants to sponsor family members to settle in the U.S.
They believe that a merit system that selects immigrants based on individual
skills should replace the current system.
[email protected]
For more on global development news, see our Global Development Watch page,
and follow me @AMSimmons1 on Twitter |
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