Idea of the Day: Pay Attention to the Future Achievements of Immigrants

November 14, 2011

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The United States should pay attention to immigrants’ future achievement because we will greatly depend on their human resources in coming decades. The coming retirement of the large generation of baby boomers, for example, is expected to create urgent labor needs among private and public employers, and falling labor force growth opens many opportunities for new workers.

Likewise, immigrants help shore up programs such as Social Security, and losing them would mean a significant shortfall. The housing market also depends increasingly on immigrant households, who disproportionately own their own homes. Without their buying power homeowners would find it harder to sell their properties.

The coming decade is a pivotal period in the nation’s economic history and deserves to be closely monitored. The findings of this study demonstrate how rapidly the new immigrant residents are likely to advance. Their success will be a vitally important contribution to the new economy.

For more on this issue, please see:

• Assimilation Tomorrow by Dowell Myers and John Pitkin