When was the last time immigration was as controversial as it is now? Politicians with serious presidential aspirations have come to wink at xenophobia. It’s not just anger over the 11 million undocumented people, of which eight million are workers. A lot of people in this Land of Immigrants appear to be ambivalent about any kind of immigration today. 

In 1980, 6.2% of the American population was foreign-born. Today, over 16% of the workforce is foreign born. My analysis of over a hundred job categories suggests that 20% of work injuries are sustained by these workers. 

Yet most of us have very little understanding of foreign-born workers. We are befuddled about what 25 million foreign-born workers are doing here. We view them through outdated stereotypes and deep-seated, unexplored assumptions.  

Spend a minute to see what immigration actually means today to the economy and to workers’ comp.

With a great increase in immigration since Reagan-era law changes in the early 1980s, foreign-born workers spread out beyond traditional centers such as New York City and southern California. Meanwhile, native-born workforces have flattened out or shrunk in many locations.

The State of Maine is one of many places in which these trends play out. The state is experiencing a “demographic winter,” says Claude Rwaganje, a native of the Democratic Republic of Congo who runs a financial literary program in Portland.

The foreign-born population in Maine grew from 37,000 in 2000 to 48,000 in 2010, or from 2.9% to 3.6% of the state’s population. These figures are miniscule compared to traditional immigrant meccas. But Maine clearly shows what’s happening in regional job markets throughout the country.

The state thinks it needs a steady, modest net increase in workers to call its workforce “stable.” State planners expect the number of adults between 30 and 50 to remain pretty much unchanged through 2022. But that’s before taking into account an outflow of native-born adults and the inflow of foreign-born.

Those coming to Maine don’t fit old stereotypes. Many Africans settle there. The Somali population in the city of Lewiston, an hour from Portland, accounts for a tenth of the city’s population. The entire African population in the United States, only 80,000 in 1970, is now close to two million, doubling every decade. 

Foreign-born workers are more likely to have less than a high school education (30% of them vs. about 10% for native-born workers). This is basically why foreign-born workers fill a lot of in jobs in landscaping, farming, low-skilled construction and personal assistance.

But look at the other end of the education spectrum. A third of Maine’s foreign-born population age 25 and older had at least a bachelor’s degree in 2011, compared to 28% of native-born persons age 25 and older. Nationwide, the quarter of foreign-born immigrants who have at least a bachelor’s degree earn on average more than native-born college graduates. A Maine resident from Turkey has a PhD in engineering. Kerem Durdag is today an active angel investor in start-ups in the state.

Not surprisingly, the Portland Chamber of Commerce is interested in attracting foreign-born workers. A proposal for a “New Mainer” state agency has been floated. Boston, Dayton, Greenville, North Carolina and other cities already have agencies tasked to remove barriers to residency, education and jobs for foreign-born workers.

As in the rest of the country, the Portland area has English language teachers and vocational coaches. Several hundred Syrian refugees are expected to arrive soon. Most Americans do not know that refugees are legally required to reimburse the federal government for their transportation to the United States. Rockan Abdulla, a former high school teacher in Baghdad and a vocational coach in Portland, says that new adult arrivals have to start looking for work almost immediately regardless of the state of their English.

The immigrant workforce is involved in workers’ comp because many are injured, in part because many are not well-educated. But they also work in our industry across the country, in part because many are well educated. They include Eunhee Kim, CEO of EK Health Services (Korea), Dieter Affeln, occupational medicine doctor (Germany), Tony Soares, safety management consultant for Maine Employers Mutual Insurance Corporation (Brazil), and Paulo Franca, President and CTO, DataCare Corporation (Brazil).

Workers’ comp indeed has a foreign worker agenda.

Peter Rousmaniere is a consultant for workers' compensation claims administrators and vendors and a veteran observer of workers' compensation industry trends.