Foreign Born in U.S. on Rise, Make Up 9.3% of Population

As America nears the end of the 20th century, nearly one U.S. resident in 10 is foreign born--a proportion similar to that recorded 150 years ago.

During the 1990s, the nation’s foreign-born population increased nearly four times faster than that of the native-born population, the Census Bureau says in a report being released today.

Overall, there were 25,208,000 foreign-born U.S. residents as of July 1, 1998--9.3% of the nation’s population. That was up from 19,767,316 in the 1990 census, when they were 7.9% of the population.

The current share of foreign-born residents is close to the 9.7% recorded in 1850, the first year the Census Bureau asked people their place of birth.

But the new arrivals now come from south and east, unlike the closing years of the 19th century, when Europeans flooded to America’s shores.

“Right now the biggest immigration groups are Hispanics and Asian Pacific Islanders,” said Census demographer Robert Perkins.

The number of foreign-born Latinos grew 34% from mid-1990 through mid-1998, to 10.7 million from 8 million.

And among Asians and Pacific Islanders, the number increased to 6.4 million from 4.6 million in the same period. Indeed, foreign-born Asians outnumber native-born Asian Americans, 6.4 million to 4.1 million.

During that time span, the foreign-born population grew by 27.1%, nearly four times the 7.1% increase in the native population, which increased to 245.1 million from 228.9 million.

The foreign-born share has been steadily increasing since its low point of 4.7% of the population in 1970. However, it remains well below the peak of 14.8% in 1890, during the massive European migrations.

The biggest percentage increase of the foreign-born population in the 1990s was blacks, whose numbers grew by more than 40%, to 2.4 million from 1.7 million.