Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 23, 1993 TAG: 9309230022
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
But only a few years after passing through America's golden door, many of the immigrants enter a track of rising income as they start to live the American dream, the 1990 census found.
And many of the most recent immigrants, the numbers suggest, entered the country with a college education and the financial means to make a good life.
The census counted 20 million foreign-born American residents in 1990, and 229 million native-born.
America's 1.6 million most recent immigrants, who came from 1987 to 1990, are neither the "huddled masses" of Emma Lazarus' poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty, nor a crowd of low-wage workers threatening, as some fear, to take native-born workers' jobs. They also aren't rich refugees buying up America.
They are a mixed bag.
Most immigrants begin poor. Forty-one percent of recent immigrant households have incomes of less than $15,000 a year.
Immigrants rapidly move out of poverty. After less than a decade in the United States, the share of foreign-born families living below the poverty line drops by one-third. Households making less than $15,000 a year also drop by one-third.
Many immigrants earn big money their first years in America. One household in seven among the new arrivals has income of $50,000 a year or more. After less than a decade, one household in five has income at those levels.
One recent immigrant in four has a college degree, and one in three has a high-school diploma.
"We get some very high-skilled immigrants and some very low-skilled immigrants," said Jeff Tassel, demographer at The Urban Institute, a Washington research group. "So there's not just one story."
People who were admitted legally tend to have higher education and skills. Illegal immigrants, estimated by the government at about 3 million people, tend to have skills that command less pay.
"We see evidence over time of people acquiring skills and accumulating the experience that helps them do better," Tassel said. "Of course, the higher you start, the better you tend to do."
Once immigrants settle into American life, they tend to become citizens. Nearly two-third of those who immigrated before 1980 are now U.S. citizens.
by CNB