Almost two million immigrants with college degrees are in low-skilled jobs or are unemployed in the US. This costs billions of dollars in potential tax revenue every year, according to researchers, who say that the US needs to develop a ‘smarter’ policy on immigration.
The Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank based in Washington DC, released a report on Wednesday. It states that immigrants with a college education are missing out on over $39 billion in wages because they can only get low-skilled jobs despite their qualifications. The result of that loss also means that the US government is missing out on taxes of more than $10 billion. According to the report, this is the first time that the economic costs of what is termed ‘brain waste’ have been estimated.
The federal government amassed a nationwide total of $1.5 trillion in the 2015 fiscal year from individual income tax, the Pew Research Center says. Michael Fix, the report’s co-author and president of the Migration Policy Institute, says that ‘brain waste’ is becoming an increasing concern to immigrants who come to the US with university degrees.
The US attracts a higher degree of immigrants than is the case with any other country in the world, but many are unable to get jobs appropriate to their qualifications because of issues such as being educated in a foreign country, according to the report. Fix says that with an increasingly educated immigrant workforce, it is only sensible to attempt to leverage their talents fully.