About one in eight persons in the United States was born outside the country as of 2005. This represents an increase of more than one percent in five years. Immigrants comprise an even greater share of adults in the United States: 15.1 percent, or one in six persons.

Immigrants from Latin America constituted a majority (57.3 percent) of the 7.9 million new immigrants who arrived in the United States between 2000 and 2005. One quarter of recent arrivals came from Asia and about 9.6 percent from Europe. However, over this same time period, about 3 million foreign-born individuals in the United States either died or returned to their home countries, meaning that the foreign-born population as a whole increased by a lesser margin of 4.9 million.

State-by-State Trends

Six states have immigrant populations of more than one million: California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Texas. These states have long been the major ports of entry for immigrants to the United States and this continues to be the case today. In 2005, two-thirds of immigrants in the United States resided in these traditional immigration gateways. However, immigrant populations of more than 500,000 are now found in new destinations such as North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia.

California still is the state with the highest proportion of immigrants in its population. More than 27 percent of California residents were foreign-born in 2005. Immigrants account for more than one in six persons (15 percent or more) in seven states: California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, Nevada, and Hawaii.

Although the largest immigrant populations are still concentrated in a relatively small number of states, immigration growth rates are highest in “non-traditional” destinations in the South and Midwest. For instance, the number of immigrants in South Carolina grew by 47.8 percent in just the 2000-2005 period. In Georgia (which has the ninth largest immigrant population in the United States), the foreign-born population increased by almost 39 percent in five years.

Much of the immigration occurring in states with the highest immigration growth rates is recent. About 38 percent of immigrants in Alabama, for example, have entered the United States since 2000. Similar percentages are found in South Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The presence of many newly arrived immigrants suggests a need for settlement policies such as English-language classes to facilitate the integration of immigrants into U.S. society and thereby maximize their contributions to the U.S. economy.

In many Northeastern and Midwestern states which have aging populations and are experiencing out-migration and low fertility rates among natives, immigration plays an especially critical role in maintaining population size. Massachusetts is the most striking example. New immigration since 2000 actually exceeded overall population growth, suggesting that the state would have experienced a net population decline in the absence of immigration. Immigration also is a major factor in population stability in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

Naturalized immigrants make up an increasing share of the potential electorate in states with large immigrant populations. Nowhere is this more evident than in California, which not only has a large immigrant population, but also was the site of large-scale naturalization drives in the 1990s. Today, naturalized immigrants comprise one in five voting-age adults in California. Naturalized immigrants are more than 10 percent of adults in New York, New Jersey, Hawaii, and Florida.

Conclusion

The growth of the immigrant population since 2000, as well as the dispersion of immigration to new destinations and its role in shoring up the populations of some states, highlights the profound importance of immigration to the U.S. labor force. As a recent study by the Migration Policy Institute concluded, immigrant workers will likely account for between one-third and one-half of total U.S. labor-force growth through 2030.⁴ The breadth and depth of this phenomenon contrasts with the failure of Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform to adjust our nation’s immigration laws to match demographic reality. Much more is needed in terms of admissions policy, including new categories of permanent and temporary visas for workers, family members, students, and other visitors, as well as the lifting of arbitrary numerical caps on immigration. Lawmakers also need to devote greater attention to settlement policy, such as English-language instruction and assistance with meeting other requirements for naturalization, to better integrate immigrants into U.S. society and increase their contributions to the U.S. economy. One can only hope that our lawmakers finally open their eyes to the demographic march of immigration.

August 2006

Endnotes
^* Rob Paral is a Research Fellow with the Immigration Policy Center; he is also a Fellow with the Institute for Latino Studies at Notre Dame University. He may be reached at info@robparal.com. Michael Norkewicz provided invaluable data processing skills to make this report possible.
¹ The 2005 American Community Survey included 3 percent of all households in the United States, which represents a substantial advance in the quality of intercensal population estimates. The ACS excludes the small percentage of persons who live in group quarters including prisons and nursing homes. To make the numbers in this report comparable with the 2000 census (which covered the entire population), all 2000 data are for the population in households, excluding residents of group quarters.
² Rakesh Kochhar, Growth in the Foreign-Born Workforce and Employment of the Native Born. Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, August 10, 2006, p. ii.
³ Jeffrey S. Passel, The Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S.: Estimates Based on the March 2005 Current Population Survey. Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, March 7, 2005, p. 9.
⁴ B. Lindsay Lowell, Julia Gelatt & Jeanne Batalova, Immigrants and Labor Force Trends: The Future, Past, and Present. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, July 2006, p. 1.

Copyright 2006 by the American Immigration Law Foundation