Becoming American: Why Immigration Is Good for Our Nation's Future (17 page)

Another industry in which immigrants are frequently employed is the hospitality industry. According to the Immigrant Learning Center, “Immigrants participate in the United States Leisure and Hospitality industry at a higher rate than the native-born as both workers and business owners.”
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Over 50 percent of maids, housekeeping cleaners, janitors, and building cleaners are foreign born. In addition to these occupations, immigrants frequently occupy roles as lodging managers, cooks, and dining room and cafeteria attendants or bartender helpers. Some studies have even shown that foreign-born workers fill 80 percent of entry-level roles in U.S. restaurants and hotels.
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Additionally, it has been found that entrepreneurship levels in the accommodation industry are higher for foreign-born workers than they are for native-born people. Despite the recent recession and the presence of immigrants currently in the accommodation industry, it is facing a labor shortage. As the industry continues to grow at a predicted rate of 16.4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, even more jobs will need to be fulfilled. Presently, an estimated one of sixteen illegal immigrants work in the hospitality industry. For this reason, many in the accommodation industry are advocating for immigration reform, including the creation of a guest worker program. Also, many hope for a comprehensive, national reform because if policies vary by state, then large hospitality chains, such as the Marriott or the Hyatt, may face difficulty in hiring immigrants.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, many immigrants also fulfill industry needs in high-skilled professions, such as health care, high-tech manufacturing, information technology, and life sciences. Although many Americans do seek higher forms of education, not enough go into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. As a result, many STEM employers look to immigrants to fulfill open positions. Additionally, Census data show that immigrants from India and Taiwan are the most highly educated of these immigrants. In addition, immigrants from the United Kingdom, China, Japan, Iran, and Germany tend to be better educated than native U.S. citizens. In 2000, less than a quarter of all native U.S.- and foreign-born residents held a bachelor’s degree or higher, while 69.1 percent of Indian immigrants held such degrees, as did 66.6 percent of those from Taiwan and 42.7 percent from China. Immigrant groups from India, China, and Taiwan have a large presence within the U.S. engineering and technology workforce. Moreover, these groups are unique in terms of their educational and professional attainment. Census data reveal the median household income for foreign-born individuals living in the United States is $39,000, while Indian, Taiwanese, and Chinese foreign borns enjoy median household incomes of $69,000, $59,000, and $46,000, respectively.
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As the U.S. innovation industry continues to grow, the labor gap only widens: “A 2013 study shows that in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, 46 percent of job openings requiring significant STEM knowledge go unfilled for one month or longer.”
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Though there is a visa, H-1B, established to attract immigrants with STEM knowledge, the United States places a cap of sixty-five thousand people on it. Within the first week of the filing period for fiscal year 2014, this cap was reached. As a result, many businesses are unable to hire the talent they seek to remain competitive globally. Also, the lottery system established to determine who is allowed to immigrate does not properly account for the talent that could be gained. Because of this, many employers are advocating for immigration reform, which allows for a greater number of people to immigrate to the United States and to work in STEM fields. Additionally, as we saw earlier, this would have a positive impact on the U.S. economy, as studies have shown that wages of native-born employees have risen with the presence of foreign-born people working in STEM industries. Their presence has also led to the creation of additional jobs for people to occupy. At present, foreign-born workers already fulfill a large sector of high-skilled jobs. Over one million work in the health care industry, over 140,000 work in high-tech manufacturing, nearly 270,000 work in information technology, and over 40,000 work in life sciences.
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Industries, including information technology, biotech, nanotech, and robotics, will be the foundation of future economies and will desperately need higher-educated STEM employees. For the future of U.S. competitiveness and the successful development of future industries, the United States needs unrestricted access to this pool of high-potential immigrants.

NOTES

1. “Foreign-Born Workers: Labor Force Characteristics 2012,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, May 22, 2013,
www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/forbrn.pdf
(accessed October 25, 2013).

2. “Foreign-Born Workers: Labor Force Characteristics 2012.”

3. Audrey Singer, “Immigrant Workers in the U.S. Labor Force,”
Brookings.com
, March 15, 2012,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2012/03/15-immigrant-workers-singer#4
(accessed July 9, 2013).

4. Singer, “Immigrant Workers in the U.S. Labor Force.”

5. “Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South,” Southern Poverty Law Center, April 2009,
http://www.splcenter.org/publications/under-siege-life-low-income-latinos-south/2-racial-profiling
(accessed October 25, 2013).

6. Peter Whoriskey, “U.S. Manufacturing Sees Shortage of Skilled Factory Workers,”
Washington Post
, February 19, 2012,
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-02-19/business/35444240_1_factory-workers-laid-off-workers-jobs
(accessed July 9, 2013).

7. Singer, “Immigrant Workers in the U.S. Labor Force.”

8. “Brookings: Quality. Independence. Impact.” The Brookings Institute,
http://www.brookings.edu
(accessed July 8, 2013).

9. “U.S. Economy, U.S. Workers, and Immigration Reform,” U.S. Government Printing Office, May 3, 2007,
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110hhrg35117/html/CHRG-110hhrg35117.htm
(accessed July 8, 2013).

10. “U.S. Economy, U.S. Workers, and Immigration Reform.”

11. Natalia Siniavskaia, “Immigrant Workers in Construction,”
NAHB Housing Economics.com
,
http://www.nahb.org/generic.aspx?sectionID=734&genericContentID=49216&channelID=311
(accessed October 25, 2013).

12. The World Bank, “Global Economic Prospects 2006: Economic Implications of Remittances and Migration,” November 14, 2005.

13. David Bier, “To Grow, the U.S. Economy Needs More Low-Skilled Immigrant Workers,”
Forbes.com
, May
6, 2013,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/05/06/to-grow-the-u-s-economy-needs-more-low-skilled-immigrant-workers/
(accessed August 17, 2013).

14. Bier, “To Grow, the U.S. Economy Needs More Low-Skilled Immigrant Workers.”

15. Bier, “To Grow, the U.S. Economy Needs More Low-Skilled Immigrant Workers.”

16. The Immigrant Learning Center, “Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Workers in Leisure and Hospitality Businesses: Massachusetts and New England 2010,”
http://www.ilctr.org/promoting-immigrants/immigration-research/immigrant-entre preneurs-and-workers-in-leisure-and-hospitality-businesses/
(accessed August 17, 2013).

17. The Immigrant Learning Center, “Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Workers in Leisure and Hospitality Businesses.”

18. Vivek Wadhwa, AnnaLee Saxenian, Richard Freeman, Gary Gereffi, and Alex Salkever, “America’s Loss Is the World’s Gain: America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Part IV,” Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, March 2009,
http://www.kauffman.org/~/media/kauffman_org/archive/researchreport/2011/6/americas_loss .pdf
(accessed July 1, 2013).

19. Wadhwa, Saxenian, Freeman, Gereffi, and Salkever, “America’s Loss Is the World’s Gain.”

20. Wadhwa, Saxenian, Freeman, Gereffi, and Salkever, “America’s Loss Is the World’s Gain.”

13

The Lure of Clusters

A
simple encounter in a coffeeshop can spark great ideas. The beauty of a cluster lies in the large number of interactions that otherwise would not occur between individuals residing within a cluster—because sometimes all it takes is a glimpse at an idea to make a connection that can change the world.

As described by Michael Porter, when business segments need high levels of specialization from various contributors, clusters of producers, suppliers, and training centers frequently arise. Examples include the nineteenth-century jute cluster in Dundee, Scotland, the diamond-cutting cluster in Surat, India, and the electronics cluster in Dongguan, China.

In the coming years, we will see clusters for the newest high-tech industries, such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, and shale oil and gas development. The United States was lucky to have Silicon Valley develop in California in the second half of the twentieth century, for it created jobs and made the United States the center for technological innovation. Immigration helped to fuel the cluster. From 1995 to 2005, immigrants founded 52 percent of the startups in Silicon Valley.
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But there is no guarantee the next clusters will develop in the United States, especially with the current state of immigration laws. In addition, governments of countries all over the world are encouraging high-tech cluster formations in their own country through providing capital and infrastructure. While the federal budget has allocated $1.7 billion to the National Nanotechnology Initiative, Rusnano (Russia) and ChiNano (China) are also trying to establish nanotechnology powerhouses. Rusnano invested $1.1 billion in 2011 in the development of a nanoindustry,
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and China has been developing a “Nano City” in Suzhou.

Money does not make discoveries; people do. While the number of engineering graduates in the United States is not small, the numbers abroad dwarf it. Every year, the United States graduates around 83,000 undergraduate engineers, while China graduates 600,000, and India graduates 350,000. In other words, for every one U.S. graduate, there are eleven graduates from China and India. There is debate as to the quality of Chinese and Indian engineers, but even if only 10 percent of the graduates are up to par with U.S. graduates, the numbers are still greater abroad. In addition, Mexico graduates 130,000 engineers and technicians a year from universities and specialized high schools.
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Europe, on the other hand, graduates numbers more consistent with the United States. In 2007, France had fifty-five thousand engineering graduates, Poland forty-six thousand, and the UK forty-six thousand.
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With a deficit of STEM workers in the United States, we will mostly need immigrants from countries with a large number of engineering graduates, such as China and India. Instead of making foreign engineers our competitors, we should encourage them to immigrate to the United States. The giants of Silicon Valley recognize the talent abroad and have spent millions of dollars trying to increase the number of H-1B visas. They know it is crucial to remaining competitive in a global economy.

The United States should make housing future high-tech clusters one of its quintessential economic goals. Doing so will allow the United States to remain the center for technological innovation and to remain an economic powerhouse. Our first step must be to attract highly skilled immigrants.

CASE STUDY: DETROIT’S AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY

If we look back through American history, we can see that clusters and immigration have led to great economic prosperity. At the end of the nineteenth century, Detroit was only a second-tier commercial and industrial city. It was not until Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903 that the Motor City started on its path to become the center of America’s economy. Not only did Ford create the modern assembly line and increase pay for industrial workers to five dollars a day, but he also recruited internationally. The immigrant workers at Ford represented over fifty nationalities and spoke over one hundred different languages. As a result, Detroit became one of America’s most racially and ethnically diverse cities. According to Thomas Sugrue, a professor of history and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, Ford “recruited skilled artisans from the shipyards of Scotland and England and blue-collar workers from the rural Midwest, as well as workers from Mexico and Lebanon, and African Americans from the city’s rapidly growing population of southern migrants.”
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