U.S. Foreign-Born Population Reaches Highest Level Since 1920s

The United States’ foreign born population has reached its highest peak since the 1920s, according to data published by the U.S. Census bureau this month. According to the American Community Survey that the Census bureau conducts, 13% of the US population is foreign-born.

A large percentage of those immigrants come from Latin American countries. The Hispanic population has jumped from 12.5% to 16.3% from 1990 to 2010 and is on track to be 30% of the total US population by 2050. That group is now represented by 50.5 million and is the largest and fastest growing “minority” group in the US, according to the Census Bureau.

Generally though, the newly released data reveals that between 2000 and 2010 the U.S. population increased by 27.3 million residents. That was a 9.7 percent increase. But the foreign-born share of the population increased even faster – from 31.1 million to 40.2 million or by 29.1 percent.

Groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) caution that this number could be an underestimation consider that a significant number of undocumented immigrants and others do not respond to surveys on fear they may be deported. Data like this may play a factor in the upcoming elections and immigration reform efforts of groups like FAIR that want to slow down the rate of migration to the US.

“Because we live in a finite world dependent on many finite resources, FAIR advocates efforts to stabilize the U.S. population, and restoring immigration to a moderate level is key to that effort,” Jack Martin, Special Projects Director for FAIR told Politic365.

“Our first target is deterring illegal immigration, but legal immigration at more than a million persons admitted each year also needs to be reduced. We are hopeful that the current plight of millions of long-term unemployed Americans will bring home to policymakers that immigration policy needs reform.”

Immigration continues to be one of the issues voters and candidates care about most for the upcoming 2012 elections.

About the Author

Jeneba Ghatt

Jeneba Jalloh Ghatt represents small, women, and minority owned business and technology companies at The Ghatt Law Group LLC, the nations’ first communications law firm owned by women and minorities. She's won landmark cases on behalf of her clients which include national civil rights and public interest organizations. In addition to actively authoring several blogs, being a radio show host and sitting on the boards of three non-profits, she is a tech junkie who has been developing online web content since the very early years of the Internet, 1991 to be precise! Follow her on Twitter at @Jenebaspeaks, on her blog, Jenebaspeaks, which covers the intersection of politics and technology or on her Politics of Raising Children blog at The Washington Times Communities section.