Of 40 million born abroad, the greatest number lives in California, with large populations in New York, Texas and Florida, Census Bureau report says.
The annual Fiesta Broadway draws crowds to downtown Los Angeles. California is home to the largest share of the nation’s foreign-born population, with 1 in 4 residing in the Golden State.
The U.S. foreign-born population has risen to its highest level since 1920, with 13% of all those living in the nation in 2010 having been born elsewhere, a new report from the Census Bureau shows.
Forty million of those residing in the U.S. in 2010 were born in other countries, up from 31 million, or 11% of the total, a decade earlier. The foreign-born share of the population dropped between 1920 and 1970, hitting a low of 4.7% in 1970, before rising again for several decades.
But that growth has slowed in recent years as immigration has dropped, census officials said Thursday. Most of the recent increase in the foreign-born population came between 2000 and 2006, said Elizabeth M. Grieco, chief of the bureau’s foreign-born population branch.
California is home to the lion’sshare of the foreign-born population, with 1 in 4 residing in the Golden State, the new report shows. Twenty-seven percent of the state’s population of 37 million in 2010 was born abroad, up from 26% in 2000.
Three other big states, New York, Texas and Florida, accounted for a third of the nation’s foreign-born population, with New York having the second-highest total at 11%. West Virginia had the smallest percentage, with just 1% born outside the U.S.
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