An underappreciated recent U.S. immigration trend is the rising number of immigrants who hold university-level degrees. This is particularly the case for recently arrived immigrants: 48 percent of those coming to the United States within the 2018-22 period had a college degree. The immigrant population overall slightly outperforms on educational attainment, representing 17 percent of all college-educated adults ages 25 and older in the United States, even as they were slightly less than 14 percent of the total U.S. population as of 2022.

Some college-educated immigrants come to the United States on temporary visas for high-skilled workers and researchers, as family members of U.S. residents, humanitarian migrants, or via other paths. Others obtain their education once already in the United States. Thirty-five percent of all immigrant adults (14.1 million people) had a bachelor’s degree or higher as of 2022, roughly similar to the 36 percent of all U.S.-born adults (67.8 million) who graduated college.

The number of college-educated U.S. immigrants has grown rapidly since 1990. This population increased by 89 percent between 1990 and 2000, 55 percent between 2000 and 2010, and 56 percent between 2010 and 2022 (see Figure 1). The native-born college-educated population also has grown, but at a slower pace, by 32 percent, 26 percent, and 40 percent, respectively. The faster growth of the high-skilled immigrant population means that their share of all college-educated adults in the United States also has increased over the last three decades, from 10 percent in 1990 to 17 percent in 2022.

Source: Article: College-Educated Immigrants in the United.. | migrationpolicy.org