In 2022, 28% of direct care workers in the U.S. were immigrants, up from 21% in 2011, according to PHI, a research organization that studies the direct care workforce. That unpaid care is where the cost transfers onto native-born workers. Even outside of the care economy, the evidence is piling up that native-born workers aren’t filling the jobs of immigrants. But U.S.-born workers didn’t fill the gap. “Foreign-born and native-born workers complement rather than purely substitute for each other,” Swonk said.