Young American College Grads Need Break From Immigration Competition (keep only the truly extraordinary)

A new Brookings report brags about all the college graduates that our immigration policy is adding into the U.S. worker pool, but the latest unemployment statistics show nothing but bad news for our own American college graduates.

At the end of the first quarter, this was the percentage of young adult American college grads (age 21-29) who wanted a full-time job but couldn’t find one:

12.2%

That is more than double the official “U-6” unemployment rate for this group before the economic collapse three years ago.

And the situation for our young adults, I’m sure, is much worse than that percentage suggests because so many of the college grads who DO have jobs are taking any job they can get (like the young woman I talked with Sunday who just graduated from an Ivy League school and is working as the shampoo woman at a hair salon).

YOUNG BLACK AND HISPANIC AMERICAN COLLEGE GRADS IN EVEN WORSE SHAPE

The latest data from the federal current Population Survey show that the U-6 unemployment rate for young HISPANIC AMERICAN college grads is:

14.4%

And, as always, the descendants of American slaves from Africa are hardest hit with an unemployment rate of:

20.0%

For all the blather among some segments of politicians in Washington about the need to reduce the Black Underclass, to better educate young Black Americans and get them into college, you will search in vain for those same voices to say it doesn’t make sense to be giving greencards to huge numbers of foreign-born college graduates while . . . . .

ONE OUT OF EVERY FIVE YOUNG ADULT BLACK COLLEGE GRADUATES WHO WANTS A FULL-TIME JOB CAN’T FIND ONE.

Stressing the priority of American college grads — particularly Black and Hispanic grads — is not meant as disrespect to the foreign students who are taking advantage of our fine colleges for an education. 

Just as we need to care for the members of our own national community, the foreign students graduating from our colleges need to care for the members of their own national communities by taking their skills and education back home. 

YES, KEEP & ATTRACT THE TRULY EXTRAORDINARILY SKILLED IMMIGRANTS

I agree with Professor Norm Matloff of University of California, Davis, that we should keep the doors open for keeping in our workforce the foreign students in our universities  who meet the “extraordinary” criteria in our immigration policies.

The problem, as Prof. Matloff has well documented,  is that most of our employment-based immigration for foreign college grads is for the very good and average.

Why is that a problem?  Because we have hundreds of thousands of very good and average American college grads who can’t find a job.

Maybe some of these unemployed American students have families for whom the incredibly high costs of college didn’t make a dent in their savings.  But for most of those families, college costs were a real sacrifice.

Yet, after all the money spent and all the effort applied, one out of every eight American grads below the age of 30 who wants a full-time job can’t find one in any field at all.  (And this doesn’t count all those who have just given up.)

What a way to start lives as adults!

What a disincentive, particularly for members of our minority communities, to strive and to delay gratification by seeking additional education!

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA