Does America need immigrants to take low-skill jobs ?

In order to work as a home-health aide “you have to love people,” as Althea Angus puts it. The 55-year old should know. She has spent the past four years as a live-in aide for a 95-year-old woman in Manhattan’s upscale Sutton Place neighbourhood…

40.4 million foreign-born people in America

In addition to being a home-health aide, Angus is also an immigrant. Born in Treasure Beach, Jamaica, she came to New York in 2008. She’s currently a permanent resident and will be applying to become a citizen this December. She is one of the estimated 40.4 million foreign-born people currently residing in the United States, according to estimates maintained by the progressive think tank, the Center for American Progress. Roughly a quarter of that group are in the country illegally…

More low-skilled workers needed

According to the pair of economists, the country will offer 3.6 million new jobs in sectors such as health care, food service, construction and janitorial services. But there will only be 1.7 million new American workers between ages 25-54 entering the workforce, many of whom might be unwilling to do the very work done by people like Angus…

Indeed, such a refusal has been apparent in the early years of the financial crisis. As Quartz put it last year, “some skilled workers whose jobs have been outsourced don’t want to take low-skill jobs, and some older unemployed workers have opted for Social Security’s disability pensions.”

Immigration experts like Allan Wernick of Baruch College in New York say the arithmetic of immigration reform is simple. “If there aren’t reforms that make it easier for immigrants to work in America it hurts America,” he said in an interview with AOL Jobs. “It makes it harder for people to find good live-in household care,” to mention one sector new immigrants are known to work in.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via Does America Need Immigrants For Low-Skilled Work? – Careers Articles.

Editor’s Note: 

This is an important issue. But several countries also count on skilled and educated immigration to foster growth and immigration.

see Points-Based Immigration Systems in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom

The individual country surveys reveal that Australia operates a hybrid system for skilled migration that involves employer sponsorship and a points-based visa program that was revised in 2012. The UK’s points-based program, introduced in 2003, provides for five different immigrant tiers. Canada uses a points-based selection process for its Federal Skilled Workers Program, which is one of several programs within its “economic class” of immigration Continue reading »