Upwardly Global President Jina Krause-Vilmar recently joined hosts Maggie Dawn and Tom Palzewicz on The Maggie Daun Show for an insightful discussion about the vital contributions of immigrants across the United States. In the episode “Economic Anxiety, Immigrant Impact, and Trump’s Tax Turmoil,” Jina provided compelling evidence countering common misconceptions about immigration.
Jina emphasize how immigrants are revitalizing rural economies across the country and immigrants’ ability to fill workforce gaps — particularly in the healthcare sector. She shared of labor shortages:
“The reality is that close to 50% of immigrants coming into the United States to work have a bachelor’s degree or higher. These are not the same people who came to build the railroads. This is a very mixed skilled population. I would also say if you’re looking at things like physicians, 99 million Americans do not have access to a primary healthcare provider. And that is largely based in rural communities. That means that you have to travel over 100 miles in order to access a physician. That means you are not in area that has a primary healthcare physician. And yet we have 215,000 internationally trained doctors in the United States today who are unable to work as physicians because they have to go through the whole process over again.
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We have serious labor shortages, and that labor shortage gets much bigger once you get to mid- and high-skilled roles, and that is not going to be filled by us trying to graduate everyone we possibly can we just do not have enough people to do it. And let’s be real — we never had enough people to do it at any decade of this country.”