African immigrants in US more educated than the average American

THERE is a huge gap between the level of education of immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa in the United States and in Europe, the Pew Research Centre said in a study released on Tuesday.

In Italy only 10 percent of such immigrants 25 or older have some college education. In France that number is 30 percent, and in the UK it is a little under half

But in the USA, 69 percent of those originally from sub-Saharan Africa has at least some college education.

Such immigrants are also more likely to be employed in the US than in Europe — and they are almost as likely to be employed as those born in America.

According to the Pew study, 92.9 percent of subSaharan immigrants in the US who are 15percent or older are employed. That is slightly higher than in the UK (91.5percent), much higher than Italy (80.3 percent), and just a hair below the 94 percent of those born in the US. Pew says that nearly half the subSaharan immigrants to the US in recent years entered that country as family members of either US citizens or permanent residents, in a form of the “chain migration” decried by US President Donald Trump.

There is no data to show how educated that group of family-immigrants are — but reason to suppose they aren’t exactly a drain on the system.

“About half of all immigrants from both North and sub-Saharan Africa who were active in the labour force and had obtained legal permanent residence reported working in a professional or managerial occupation,” Pew reported. “Often such occupations require a relatively high level of education.”

Neither the study nor the underlying data provide statistics for specific sub-Saharan countries such as South Africa.

It is possible, Pew says, that migrants to the US obtained their qualifications once they were in that country and did not necessarily arrive educated. Nonetheless, the stark differences between education levels in the US and European countries suggest that policy — the kind of policy Trump wants to change — makes a difference in the kind of immigrants a country attracts. — Sapa