Diverging Pathways: Immigrants’ Legal Status and Access to Postsecondary Credentials

Of the 115.3 million adults in the U.S. aged 16 to 64 who as of 2019 did not have a college degree or apprenticeship certificate, 23.9 million (21 percent) were immigrants. In this issue brief for the Migration Policy Institute, entitled “Diverging Pathways: Immigrants’ Legal Status and Access to Postsecondary Credentials,” Jeanne Batalova and Michael Fix argue that today’s labor shortage challenges require maximized use of our available workforce, and that immigrants could help fill these gaps in the labor force, expand local economies, add to local tax revenues, and “serve the larger goal of promoting greater equity on the part of state and local education and training programs.” Looking at Census Bureau data, the authors found that 66 percent of immigrants without degrees, certificates or licenses (15.8 million out of 23.9 million) were eligible to participate in key federal and state educational programs designed to help people acquire occupational credentials. Their eligibility is connected to their legal status as naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents, or work-authorized immigrants admitted to the U.S. for humanitarian purposes. On the other hand, 7.7 million immigrants without degrees, certificates or licenses face additional challenges because of their unauthorized status. Batalova and Fix suggest legislative proposals to make unauthorized immigrants who have both protection from deportation and work authorization eligible for federal and state programs in order to close these labor gaps and support their upward mobility. At the same time, program managers need to address some of the special barriers, e.g. limited English proficiency, that discourage immigrants as a whole from participating in post-secondary educational programs. (The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)

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