Immigration is an important factor shaping the education distribution of the United  States.  Several writers have noted t hat immigration has led to a “barbell” shaped  educational distribution in some places, with low - skilled immigrants flowing into the  United States along with others possessing advanced degrees (Martin 1995, Frey 2004).   Places with concentrations of high sc hool dropouts, for example, tend also to have high  immigrant populations (Bauman and Graf 2003). An unexamined assumption is that the characteristics of the immigrants themselves have created these conditions. The contribution of local schools, colleges  and universities to the shape of the immigrant  educational distribution has been largely ignored.