College-Educated Immigrants in the United States
Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova have a report in Migration Information Source on college-educated immigrants in the United States.
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. The Immigration Act of 1990 and other legislation passed in the last two decades have facilitated the immigration of college-educated individuals to the United States by creating temporary visa programs for high-skilled workers and attracting international students to higher education institutions, especially those in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.
The number of immigrants with higher education has grown at more than twice the rate of the same population among the U.S. born. Between 1990 and 2000, the college-educated immigrant population increased 89 percent from 3.1 million to 5.9 million, and a further 78 percent between 2000 and 2014 (from 5.9 million to 10.5 million. The native-born college-educated population grew over the same periods by 32 percent and 39 percent, respectively. Given the faster rate of growth, the foreign-born share of the total college-educated population also increased over the last two and a half decades: from 10 percent in 1990 to 16 percent in 2014.
KJ