The immigrants President Biden welcomed to the U.S. over the last four years were poorer and less educated than their predecessors, according to a new study being released Wednesday.

The number of newcomers who never advanced past high school is now larger than those with a bachelor’s degree, for the first time in more than a decade. And the median annual earnings of new immigrant men dropped to about $32,000 a year, down from more than $50,000 during the Trump administration, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

Both numbers reflect the surge in illegal immigrants and their heavily Latin American origins, said Steven A. Camarota, the lead author of the study.

It’s also a major reversal from the previous 20 years, which saw rising incomes and education levels for the overall immigrant population.

Some 46% of new arrivals in 2024 topped out at a high school-level education, according to the study, which used new Census Bureau data. That’s more than the 41% who held a bachelor’s degree or higher, or a 5-point gap toward the lower-educated.

A decade earlier, by contrast, just 38% topped out in high school and 47% held a bachelor’s degree, or a 9-point advantage to the better-educated.

The decline also stacks up poorly against native-born Americans, whose education levels have been rising.

“This deterioration in education levels has profound implications for new immigrants’ social mobility and impact on the United States,” the new study said.

Education levels vary by region of origin.

Nearly a quarter of Mexican immigrants didn’t get past high school, nor did 56% of other Latin American migrants.

By contrast 64% of migrants from Europe and 80% from South Asia had at least a bachelor’s degree.

Education and income are closely aligned, which helps explain the stark drop in median earnings for the new arrivals.

The result is a massive spike in immigrants living at or near the poverty line, from 1.9 million in 2018 to 3.5 million as of 2024.

Those numbers are a major reversal of fortune.

U.S.-born men’s wages have been relatively flat for the last two decades, with the median standing just above $60,000 for men, when measured in constant dollars.

Immigrants had been making serious gains from 2010 to 2018, going from $30,000 to more than $50,000. But they have given almost all of that back, settling back at $32,070 as of last year.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.