36 million foreign-born people in US: Census Report

Washington, Aug 16: Immigrants in the United States are dispersing to areas beyond their traditional destinations, US Census Report says.

According to new data released yesterday by the US Census Bureau, there were 36 million foreign-born people in the United States last year, making up 12.4 per cent of the population.

More than one in three residents living in Los Angeles and New York were not US citizens at birth.

But, the fastest growth in the foreign-born population recently has been in Southeastern states.

Of the five million new arrivals to the United States during the years 2000-2005, 58 per cent settled in the six states that traditionally attract the largest numbers of immigrants -- California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois.

California alone attracted 21 per cent.

According to Jeffrey Passel, a demographer with the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, the shares of these six states are going down.

He said in the 1980s and early 1990s ''the big six'' immigrant states attracted about 80 per cent of new arrivals, and California 35 percent.

In 2000-2005, the states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Nebraska and New Hampshire experienced growth in their foreign-born populations at rates more than double the rate in the United States as a whole (which is 16 per cent).

According to Rakesh Kochhar, Associate Director for Research at Pew, economic growth and the jobs that come with it are magnets for immigrants. He said the flow of immigrants peaked in the late 1990s and then decreased.

''It may have been associated with recession or with 9/11,'' he said, ''but it was a temporary lull in 2003 and 2004. There has been a pickup again.'' He attributed the shift of immigrant settlement in the Southeast to the availability of jobs in manufacturing, food processing and construction.

Kochhar released a study on August 10 that compares employment levels and foreign-born populations in each of the 50 states to assess immigrants' impact on employment of American-born workers.

In a news conference, he said that he found no consistent pattern.

According to the Census Bureau Report, the 2.9 million people from Latin American countries accounted for more than half of all arrivals to the United States in 2000-2005. Of those, 1.8 million were from Mexico. The next largest group (1.2 million) arrived from Asia -- with India, China and the Philippines supplying the greatest numbers.

A United Nations report said that the United States hosts the largest share of the world's immigrants -- 20 per cent. From 1990 to 2005, the United States accounted for 75 per cent of the world's increase in immigrants, gaining 15 million people, according to the United Nations.

Germany and Spain followed, with gains of more than 4 million each.

UNI