VOA常速英语2015--研究称芝加哥对移民的吸引力下降

Study: Immigration to Chicago Drops 研究称芝加哥对移民的吸引力下降

CHICAGO—

For several years, human resources director Pete Tapaskar says it’s been hard to fill all the open positions at his suburban 1 Chicago-based technology company, ProSoft.

几年来，人力资源总监皮特·塔帕斯卡说，给他在芝加哥郊区的科技公司所有空闲职位找到人选并不容易。

“Getting high skilled people is still a challenge,” he said from his office in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove 2.

“找到技术精湛的人员仍是个问题。”

To fill those highly skilled tech jobs, Tapaskar recruits from outside the United States. In fact, about 80 percent of ProSoft’s workforce 3 is from South Asia, and many, Tapaskar included, came to Chicago on special work visas, known as "H1B's."

为了填满这些对技术要求高的科技职位，塔帕斯卡从美国之外招募人员。ProSoft公司大约80%的员工来自南亚，还有包括塔帕斯卡在内的很多人是持H1B这种特殊工作签证来芝加哥的。

“There is a high demand for the H1B’s" for those who have high tech skills, he said.

“对那些技术水平高的H1B签证持有者的需求很大。”

While the demand for those visas remains 4 high, many who get them are not choosing Chicago as their top destination. Instead, they choose to work in the south, Tapaskar said, "specifically Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia."

尽管对这种签证的需求量仍很大，塔帕斯卡说很多获得这种签证的人并不选择芝加哥作为其优选目的地。“他们选择去南方，尤其是德克萨斯州、亚特兰大和乔治亚州。”

As populations change in large cities like Chicago, growth depends in part on legal international immigration. But in Chicago, the nation’s third largest city, the numbers show it is not winning the popularity contest for immigrants.

“What we are seeing right now is a substantially decreased total of international in-migration,” said Elizabeth Schuh, principal policy analyst 5 for the Chicago Metropolitan 6 Agency for Planning (CMAP). “Prior to the recession we were between 50 and 60 thousand most years. Now, since 2010, we’ve been at about 23- to 24-thousand international in-migration on a net basis.”

“我们目前看到的情况是，国际移民总数量有了很大减少，”伊丽莎白·舒是芝加哥都会规划部的首席政策分析师，她负责研究芝加哥最近的移民趋势。“在衰退之前大多数年份都有5万到6万的移民，自从2010年以来，国际净移民量在2.3万到2.4万之间。”

Immigration was just one component 7 of a recent study Schuh worked on for CMAP to explore how overall population is changing in the Chicago region.

舒说有些年份会减少三分之二，她说这种大幅度的减少导致了芝加哥总体人口的缓慢增长。芝加哥比其他类似大城市要增长得慢，比如波士顿、洛杉矶和纽约。

Schuh says that dramatic drop — as much as two-thirds some years — contributes to Chicago’s overall stagnant 8 population growth. Since 2010, she said, "the Chicago region has been growing at a much slower rate than what we would consider to be our peers.”

Those peers include large cities like Boston and New York City, where cold winter weather is similar to that of Chicago. Yet more immigrants are choosing to live in those cities, forcing Chicago down in the rankings of top locations for immigration.

“From 2005 to 2009 ... the Chicago region was 4th in the country in terms of its rank for just the raw number of immigrants it attracted,” Schuh explained. “And for the same number of years from 2009 to 2014, the Chicago region was 8th. So just adding even across all of those years, you are seeing a substantial drop and you are seeing people go to other regions.”

“从2005到2009年，就吸引的全部移民数量来说，芝加哥在全国排名第四。而从2009年到2014年，在这同样长的时间内，芝加哥地区排名第八。所以将全部年份加起来，我们能看到数量急剧下降。”

Those other regions include popular vacation and warm weather states like California and Florida.

But Tapaskar says the skilled legal immigrants he wants to recruit are forfeiting 9 Chicago and flocking to tech-sector-rich locations such as Texas — for many reasons.

塔帕斯卡说有很多原因可以解释为何移民们选择南部州而不是芝加哥，

“The environment there is ideal for starting a business,” he says. “Could be the taxes are lower, and employers are getting a lot of benefits from the state government.”

“那些地方的环境对开办企业更有力，可能是更低的税收，雇员们能从州政府那里得到更多福利。”

But Tapaskar says one thing that could reverse that trend, and bring new immigrants to Chicago, is increasing the number of overall work visas allocated 10 to immigrants each year, a move he hopes would attract more of the highly-skilled tech workers his business needs.

但塔帕斯卡说，有一种措施可能扭转这一局面，让新移民来芝加哥，那就是增加那种能吸引他公司所需的技术熟练科技人员的工作签证的数量。