Giving Compass' Take:

• As Jeanne Batalova writes for Migration Policy Institute explains, coronavirus is revealing the need to recognize the importance of immigrant health-care workers.

• What can we learn about fairly compensating immigrant health-care workers as a result of the pandemic? How can you increase your awareness towards and support for this often underappreciated community?

• Read about resources to support coronavirus responders.

Immigrants represent disproportionately high shares of U.S. workers in many essential occupations, including in health care—a fact underscored during the coronavirus pandemic as the foreign born have played a significant role in frontline pandemic-response sectors. Immigrants are overrepresented among certain health-care occupations. Even as immigrants represent 17 percent of the overall U.S. civilian workforce, they are 28 percent of physicians and 24 percent of dentists, for example, as well as 38 percent of home health aides.

Overall, immigrants ranging from naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents, and temporary workers to recipients of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program accounted for nearly 18 percent of the 14.7 million people in the United States working in a health-care occupation in 2018. As a group, immigrant health-care workers are more likely than their U.S.-born counterparts to have obtained a university-level education. Immigrant women in the industry were more likely than natives to work in direct health-care support, the occupations known for low wages.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of health-care occupations were among the fastest-growing occupations, as projected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the 2018-28 period. The more immediate trends now are less clear. Like other parts of the U.S. economy, the health-care sector has suffered job losses since February 2020, which may continue until the economy rebalances. Nonetheless, the main drivers for a greater demand for health-care services—population aging and longevity—remain valid. As in the past, immigrants can be expected to play a significant role in the future of U.S. health care.

Read the full article about immigrant health-care workers by Jeanne Batalova at Migration Policy Institute.