Immigration Policy

Immigrants And The Jobs They Take

While the debate continues over whether immigrants are good or bad for the U.S. culture and economy, the fact is they have carved out niches in the U.S. labor market -- often doing the sorts of tasks that native-born Americans refuse to do for themselves.

Those who are foreign-born make up about 9 percent of the U.S. population.

  • Immigrant men tend to take jobs as tailors, waiters and assistants, private household and restaurant cooks, dressmakers, housekeepers, and agricultural graders and sorters.

  • Foreign-born women gravitate to such tasks as production samplers and weighers, housekeepers, tailors, apparel and fabric workers, foreign-language teachers, cleaners and servants, and even political science teachers.

  • Nearly 59 percent of U.S. male tailors are foreign-born, and nearly 46 percent of women tailors immigrated to the U.S.

  • Close to 40 percent of foreign-language teachers in the U.S. came from abroad.

Of the 650,000 physicians in the U.S., 160,000 came from other countries -- with a surprising 26,000 from India, one of the world's largest producers of doctors.

Experts say that the success of many immigrants in the U.S. hinges on such factors as their legal status, their education and how much money they had in their pockets when they arrived here.

Source: William Booth, "Sweat of Their Brows Reshapes an Economy," Washington Post, July 13, 1998.

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