*EPF206 12/23/2003
Text: U.S. Foreign-Born Population Grows by 11 million Through 1990s
(Foreign-born form majorities in six U.S. cities) (710)

The foreign born population in the United State increased from 19.8 million in 1990 to 31.1 million in the year 2000. The U.S. Census Bureau released a report on the foreign born population December 17, part of its ongoing analysis of the massive amount of demographic date collected in the 2000 census.

Six cities of 100,000 or more had majority populations of foreign-born citizens in 2000 -- two in Florida and four in California.

The largest foreign-born populations are concentrated in the biggest urban areas -- New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston. But the southern region of the United States experienced the fastest growth in immigrant population. The states of North Carolina and Georgia had a 200-percent increase in their foreign-born population in the studied period.

The Census Bureau report is available in full at http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-34.pdf

Tables referred to in the text are available at:
Table 1: http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-194table1.xls
Table 2: http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-194table2.xls

Following is the text of a Census Bureau press release

(begin text)

U.S. Department of Commerce News
Economics and Statistics Division
Bureau of the Census

New Facts from Census 2000
Foreign-Born a Majority in Six U.S. Cities;
Growth Fastest in South, Census Bureau Reports

Foreign-born people constituted the majority in six cities of 100,000 or more population in 2000 -- two of them in Florida and four in California, according to an analysis of census results by the U.S. Census Bureau.

More than 7-in-10 people in Hialeah, Fla., and about 6-in-10 in Miami were foreign-born, according to the census brief, The Foreign-Born Population: 2000 [PDF]. The foreign-born accounted for more than half the population in the California cities of Glendale, Santa Ana, Daly City and El Monte.

Places with 40 percent to 50 percent foreign-born in their populations in 2000 were East Los Angeles, Los Angeles and Garden Grove, Calif., and Elizabeth, N.J. (See Table 1.)

The report chronicles the increase of the foreign-born population over the last decade: from 19.8 million in 1990 to 31.1 million in 2000. All regions of the country experienced increases in the foreign-born population -- by nearly 90 percent in the South, 65 percent in the Midwest, 50 percent in the West and nearly 40 percent in the Northeast.

Between 1990 and 2000, the foreign-born population grew by 200 percent or more in North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada. In 2000, more than half of the nation's foreign-born population lived in three states: California, New York and Texas. (See Table 2.)

While the proportion of the foreign-born exceeded the national average (about 1-in-9) in nearly 200 counties, another 60 had at least 2-in-10 foreign-born residents. Some of these counties were far from traditional gateway areas, e.g., Clark, Idaho; Seward, Finney and Ford, Kan.; Franklin and Adams, Wash.; and the Aleutians West Census Area of Alaska.

Other highlights:

-- In 2000, the foreign-born made up the majority of the population in only one U.S. county: Miami-Dade, Fla., which was home to 1.1 million foreign-born (51 percent of the county's population).

-- The largest foreign-born populations in U.S. cities in 2000 were in New York (2.9 million), Los Angeles (1.5 million), Chicago (629,000) and Houston (516,000).

-- The foreign-born population grew between 100 percent and 199 percent in 16 states from 1990 to 2000. Their only growth rate below 10 percent occurred in Maine: 1.1 percent.

-- The foreign-born who were naturalized U.S. citizens in 2000 (the national average was 40 percent) outnumbered the foreign-born who were not U.S. citizens in only seven states: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Pennsylvania, Vermont and West Virginia.

-- Almost half (46 percent) of the foreign-born population was of Hispanic origin.

The data are based on responses from the sample of households who received the census long form, about 1-in-6 nationally, and are subject to sampling and nonsampling error.

(end text)

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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