*EPF404 01/04/01
New Report Says Record Number of Immigrants Now in U.S.
(Majority of immigrants are from Latin America, East Asia) (650)
By Eric Green
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- A record number of immigrants now live in the United States, says a new report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a non-partisan research organization based in Washington.

The report says 28.4 million immigrants are in the United States, which represents a 43 percent increase in the immigrant growth rate since 1990. As a percentage of the population, immigrants now account for more than 1 in 10 residents (10.4 percent), the highest percentage in 70 years, according to the report, entitled "Immigrants in the United States 2000: A Snapshot of America's Foreign-born."

Immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, and East Asia make up the majority of immigrants, with 69 percent of the foreign-born population coming from these areas, said the report. Mexicans represent the largest number of foreign-born in the United States -- 7.9 million -- accounting for 27.7 percent of all immigrants. Immigrants from East Asia -- the Philippines, China (including Hong Kong), and Taiwan -- rank second, making up 17.9 percent of the U.S. foreign-born population.

El Salvador ranks number 6 in immigration to the United States, the Dominican Republic 8, Cuba 9, Colombia 10, Canada 12, Jamaica 13, Haiti 14, Guatemala 16, Peru 17, and Ecuador 20.

Speaking at a January 4 news conference, CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian said the report provides a "snapshot" of the U.S. immigrant population in the year 2000. "The current wave of immigration, which started maybe 30 years ago, is often equated with the turn-of-the century immigration. But for all its superficial similarities, I think a lot of the data in this report as well as other information indicates how profoundly different today's immigration wave is from the past," he said.

To illustrate, Krikorian said that current immigration is less diverse than it was in 1900. About half of all immigrants in the United States, he said, come from a single "ethno-linguistic group" in Spanish-speaking Latin America. This phenomenon, Krikorian explained, "has never happened before in our history." While Germans and Italians at various points in U.S. history were the largest immigrant groups, he said, they never approached the Latin Americans' high percentage of the immigrant population overall.

Another difference between now and 100 years ago, Krikorian said, is that immigration in 2000 accounted for about one-third of the U.S. population growth rate, as opposed to one-fifth in 1900.

Asked about Mexican President Vicente Fox's recent statement that the United States might consider allowing open immigration with Mexico, Krikorian said he did not expect such an idea to become reality. Fox made the proposal for "internal political consumption, rather than as a serious proposal for the United States to adopt," Krikorian added.

Steven Camarota, author of the CIS report, said that while immigration's impact "continues to be the subject of intense national debate, there can be no doubt that the large number of immigrants now living in the United States represents an enormous challenge." Camarota, who is the CIS' director of research, said more than half of post-1970 immigrants and their U.S.-born children live in or near poverty and one-third have no health insurance, which means the situation for immigrant families is "clearly precarious."

Camarota said that "while the current economic expansion [in the United States] may tempt some to ignore these facts, when the next economic downturn occurs the costs of immigration will likely become glaringly apparent." He added that without a change in immigration policy, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that 11 to 12 million immigrants will arrive in the United States in the next decade alone.

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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