Proportion of Immigrants in U.S. Population Has Doubled Since ’70

The proportion of Americans born abroad more than doubled in the last 30 years, transforming the population of the West as well as the nation’s immigrant experience, according to a Census Bureau report released today.

The foreign-born population--which is composed largely of immigrants but also includes foreign students, temporary workers and diplomats--now stands at more than 28 million, or roughly one out of 10 Americans, the highest since the 1930s.

Among the findings:

* Seventy percent of the foreign-born live in six states, the highest number (8.9 million) in California.

* A third of all foreign-born live in either greater Los Angeles or New York. The metropolitan areas of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and Chicago house 50% of the foreign-born population, despite comprising only 21% of the total U.S. population.

* The foreign-born are 50% more likely to live in poverty than native-born Americans.

* They are less likely to own a home and more likely to have fewer years of schooling than the native-born.

* They and their children make up 21% of the American population under 25 years of age--three times their share in 1970.

* One out of every five American babies is born to a foreign-born woman, compared to 1 in 20 in 1970.

As a proportion of the American public, the foreign-born still are well below the peak levels from the late 19th and early 20th century, when close to 15% of the population was born abroad.

But the places from which foreigners come and where they settle in the U.S. have shifted dramatically. In past eras, the foreign-born consisted mostly of Europeans arriving in the Northeast and Midwest. Today’s foreign-born are mainly from Latin America and Asia--about 75% of the total--and are more likely to live in the West and South.

Generalizations quickly break apart when the foreign-born are examined in specific groups. Households headed by immigrants from Asia, for instance, tend to have higher annual incomes ($51,000) than those headed by U.S. natives ($41,000).

Those differences may be most visible in California, where the state’s foreign-born population surpasses the next three states combined. One of four Californians is born abroad, by far the highest proportion in the country.

Foreign-born Californians run Silicon Valley tech firms and toil in Los Angeles sweatshops. Workers cleaning rooms and mowing lawns in Beverly Hills and San Marino are likely to be immigrants--as are many of the homeowners employing them.

“The first thing we notice is this is a heterogeneous population,” said Dianne Schmidley, author of the Census Bureau profile of the foreign-born, which was based on a 2000 survey, not the Census 2000 household-by-household count.

Contrary to widespread perceptions, the study found that the vast majority of children living in immigrant households--as many as 80%--were born in the United States.

Almost one-third of immigrant households with three or more children were living in poverty, the study found, compared to about one-fifth of similar-sized households headed by U.S.-born parents or guardians.

The poverty faced by the children of immigrants poses a dilemma for policymakers, educators and others in immigrant enclaves like Southern California.

Foreign-born residents have vastly disparate levels of schooling. For example, 95% of African-born residents are high school graduates, a rate superior to the 87% of native-born.

The education statistics show great differences even among those born in the same region. Among the Latin American-born, for example, 80% of South Americans have high school educations, compared with 34% of Mexicans.

The work force picture is equally complex. Native workers are more likely than the foreign-born to hold managerial or professional jobs (31% of natives versus 25% of immigrants). But several foreign-born groups are more likely than natives to be managers or professionals. They include those born in Africa (37%), Asia (39%) and Europe (38%). Only 12% of Latin American immigrants have white-collar jobs.

European-born workers earned more than Asian-born and native-born workers. Asian-born residents had the highest household incomes--but the difference was due in part to having more workers per household. Latin American-born residents trailed natives and other immigrants in earnings and household income.

In home ownership rates, the advantage of being born in the United States was evident. Seven of 10 native households own their homes, compared to 49% of the foreign-born. Among the foreign-born, 64% of European-headed households own homes, compared with 52% of those born in Asia, 41% of the Latin American-born and 38% of African-born.

The lower home ownership rates for the foreign-born might be linked to their concentration in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, where housing prices are among the highest in the nation, Schmidley said.

The study underscores the evolving nature of immigrant settlement patterns. Two-thirds of foreign-born live in the West and South, a shift from the early 20th century, when most immigrants settled in the Northeast and Midwest, and half of the nation’s foreign-born in 1930 lived in the Northeast.

The statistics tend to bolster the notion that immigrants from the farthest-off countries are generally better off, though there are some exceptions--well-off Canadians and wealthy Cubans are among the immigrant mix, for instance. Schmidley said foreign-born residents from farther away appear to start with more education or resources. “Those who must travel the greatest distances seem more likely to be highly educated, or able to bring wealth or anticipate having an occupation to sustain them,” she said.

A complete breakdown of Census 2000 findings about the foreign-born population is not expected for months. Initial Census 2000 numbers indicate that the nation’s foreign-born population approached 31 million, more than 2 million more than this survey found. Experts attribute the difference in part to more aggressive census-gathering techniques. Despite the discrepancy, observers said the broad socioeconomic findings in the survey should be mirrored by Census 2000.

One constant theme in the study is the comparative lack of economic progress by immigrants from Mexico, who account for more than one-quarter of the nation’s immigrant population. Mexican immigrants are more likely to lack health insurance and be mired in low-wage, blue-collar jobs.

A key reason, experts say, is that the Mexican population includes legions of illegal immigrants, recent arrivals and people lacking high school degrees. All these factors tend to deflate wage-earning ability. The study included the nation’s estimated 7.5 million illegal immigrants but did not address them as a separate group.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Foreign-Born

The latest U.S. census figures show the concentration of America’s foreign-born, their countries of origin, the places they settle and the incomes they earn here.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

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