Education Level of Newly Arrived Immigrants Has Declined
Trend driven by the huge increase in illegal immigration from Latin America from 2021 to 2024
By Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler on May 21, 2026
Analysis of the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) confirms our earlier work based on the much smaller Current Population Survey showing that new immigrants (legal and illegal together) who arrived in the Biden administration during the border surge (2021 to 2024) are significantly less educated and have lower incomes than newcomers before the surge. The decline in education primarily reflects the enormous increase in illegal immigrants from Latin America, who tend to be significantly less educated than legal immigrants. Prior to the surge, the education level of newcomers had improved. The deterioration is important because education levels have profound implications for new immigrants’ social mobility and impact on the United States.
Of adult immigrants (legal and illegal) who arrived in the first part of 2024, 39 percent had at least a bachelor’s degree, down from 48 percent of those who arrived in 2019, before the border surge.
Of those who arrived in 2024, 45 percent had no education beyond high school, an increase from 36 percent in 2019.
The years 2022 to 2024 are the first time in more than a decade that new immigrants with no education beyond high school outnumbered those with a bachelor’s degree.
The decline in education is pronounced relative to the U.S.-born, whose education levels steadily improved. Before the surge, the share of new immigrants with no more than a high school education matched the U.S.-born; but by 2024 a 10 percentage-point gap had opened up — 45 percent for newcomers and 35 percent for the U.S.-born.
Immigrants of every education level increased during the Biden administration, but the less-educated increased proportionally much more than the better educated and as a result the overall education of new arrivals declined significantly.
The surge in illegal immigration is reflected in a dramatic increase in new arrivals from Latin America, who tend to have the lowest education levels of any sending region. Latin Americans increased from 38 percent of new entrants in 2019 to 55 percent by 2023 at the height of the border surge.
The decline in the education of new immigrants helps explain why the median earnings of newly arrived adult immigrant men fell from 62 percent that of U.S.-born men in 2019 to only 52 percent in 2024.1
Introduction
https://cis.org/Report/Education-Level-Newly-Arrived-Immigrants-Has-Declined
