Since arriving in the United States, Vanessa Rosales has cared for the elderly, cooked arepas, cleaned industrial warehouses and is now a hospital technician. She has worked in almost everything except as a doctor, the profession to which she dedicated 8 years of her life in Venezuela, where she completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
“I am motivated to become an anesthesiologist again and I hope to achieve this in less than six years,” this 43-year-old woman told BBC Mundo. In 2017 she left her hometown of Mérida, in western Venezuela, to move to New York.
Vanessa is one of 2.1 million immigrants in the United States who are underemployed – meaning those doing jobs below their qualifications.
More than a third of them, 446,000, are Latin Americans, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) based in Washington DC.
They are doctors who work as assistants, engineers as bricklayers, lawyers as administrative assistants or teachers as child care workers.
“It is a huge waste of human capital for the country,” says Jeanne Batalova, an underemployment specialist at MPI.
But what is the real cost to the United States? What barriers do highly qualified Latin American immigrants face? Which professions are more difficult to return to and which are less so?
The cost
The United States will reach a record 46.2 million immigrants in 2022, or 13.9% of the total population, according to the Census Bureau’s most recent report.
Of these, about 14.1 million, or 35%, of immigrant adults age 25 or older, had a bachelor’s degree or higher, a proportion similar to that of U.S.-born adults, which is 36%.
Twenty percent were unemployed or working jobs that required a high school diploma or more, a much higher percentage than the native population, which is 15.8%.
The situation is especially adverse for Latin Americans, who are by far the group with the highest proportion of underemployed workers with a college education in the United States: 32%.
Although they continued to represent nearly half (47.6%) of the immigrant workforce, foreign-born Hispanic workers earned only 83.6% of the average wage of natives, according to a recent Department of Labor study.
In total, underemployed foreigners in the United States lose about $40 billion annually in lost wages, according to an MPI estimate.
This phenomenon, known as brain waste or “brain waste,” has a significant economic impact not only for those affected but also for federal and local governments, which fail to collect more than US$10 billion in taxes each year, according to data from the MPI.
The barriers
The difficulty foreigners have in overcoming underemployment in the United States is largely due to the high barriers they must overcome.
The most immediate challenge many face is regularizing their immigration status.
This particularly affects the group of Latin Americans, who are responsible for the majority of irregular entries across the border with Mexico, which in 2023 reached 2.5 million.
Although many of them acquire a temporary work permit, it is difficult for them to conclude a contract, as “employers fear that employees will lose their status at any moment,” says Jeanne Batalova.
Another major obstacle is language.
“Many university-educated immigrants speak English and even know the terminology of their profession, but this is not enough as they need to be able to communicate at different levels, from clients to supervisors, colleagues and subordinates,” explains the MPI researcher.
Added to this is the importance of networking in high-level professional fields.
“Often someone sends a colleague’s CV to another and that’s how they find a job. Professional networks are important and immigrants, especially newcomers, often lack them,” says Batalova.
The problem with titles
Let’s say, in any case, that the doctor, engineer, lawyer, architect or teacher from Latin America has a permanent work permit in the United States, is fluent in English and has built up a valuable network of contacts.
The most difficult barrier remains: obtaining credentials to be able to work legally.
“In regulated industries, professionals are required to obtain a new degree, credential or license, and that can take one to six years, depending on the profession,” Jina Krause-Vilmar, president of the organization Upwardly Global, told BBC Mundo.
An additional obstacle, he points out, is that the credential system in the United States is “outdated and above all very decentralized,” so that each of the 50 states that make up the country imposes its own requirements on the integration of highly qualified foreigners.
Upwardly Global helps qualified immigrants like Vanessa Rosales get back into their careers, helping her transition from construction worker to hospital technician as she begins the arduous path toward her ultimate goal of becoming an anesthesiologist again.
To do so, you will need to pass all three steps of a competitive certification exam called the USMLE, complete a medical residency of at least three years, and obtain state licensure.
The process will take a minimum of five years and a huge investment of time and money.
“Many immigrants who work more than eight hours a day, six days a week, just to have food and shelter, find it extremely difficult to obtain resources to cover the long and costly process of validation,” Krause-Vilmar sums up.
The most and least difficult professions
Doctors, pharmacists, and general health specialists, as well as lawyers and attorneys, are among the most difficult professions to return to in the United States.
“These are regulated industries that require obtaining a new degree or credential, and that can take a minimum of up to six years, depending on the profession,” says the director of Upwardly Global.
In the middle range of difficulty are professions such as civil engineers, architects, accountants or social workers, as well as teachers, whose shortage has led some states to relax the previously high requirements for admission of foreigners.
And what are the highly skilled jobs that are easiest to get back into?
On the one hand, those related to finance: for consultants, business analysts or commercial managers, opportunities are more closely linked to their professional experience, international certifications and academic degrees, and the transition process is more accessible.
There, qualified Latin Americans can even outstrip their American competitors.
“In Texas and Florida, many industries are already bilingual, so mastering Spanish is an advantage. One example is Chevron in Houston, which hires employees who barely speak English because much of its work is also in Latin America,” says Krause-Vilmar.
Finally, IT professionals – from data analysts and software developers to engineers – also have a relatively easy time getting back into the profession in the United States.
“In the IT sector, academic qualifications are not usually required, so those who work in industries such as computer science, data science or artificial intelligence have an easier time finding jobs because the market demands them and this industry is much more open to foreign talent,” says the president of Upwardly Global.
A country in need of skilled workers
Those born outside the United States are more likely to work in utilities, construction and maintenance, transportation or materials handling, according to findings from a Department of Labor study released in May.
In contrast, Native Americans are more likely to hold office, management, or sales jobs, among others.
Both the Migration Policy Institute and Upwardly Global are working to ensure that this does not happen again.
The former promotes more flexible labor policies for foreigners, and the latter assists some 13,000 highly qualified immigrants each year, helping them validate their degrees and build their own networks of professional contacts in the United States.
The United States has 8.1 million job vacancies and only 6.8 million unemployed people who can fill them, according to a report released in July by the Chamber of Commerce.
“For every unemployed person there are 1.2 jobs, which means we have a very open labour market, and the idea is that people can start from where they left off,” says Krause-Vilmar.
Batalova points out that some states are already beginning to relax their labour policies to facilitate the integration of foreigners to fill the growing number of vacancies in various sectors.
However, she says, “it is a very difficult and long-term process because there are agencies and professional associations that often act as guardians.”
“They don’t want to open the doors to more and more people. That’s partly to make sure standards are kept high, but also to protect the pay and working conditions of those already inside,” he says.
In any case, the MPI specialist in underemployment considers that greater opening up is inevitable in the medium and long term if the problem of the lack of qualified workers in the United States continues to worsen.
Explains that the progressive retirement of the large population of baby boomersthose born between 1946 and 1964, among whom there are qualified professionals from all fields, “makes it necessary to think about who will come to take their places.”
“There are immigrants who have already arrived in the United States with the necessary skills, which we must be able to take advantage of and maximize. We must consider this population as a resource,” he says.
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