1 In 10 Of Us Is An Immigrant Census Finds Highest Percentage Of Foreign-Born Residents Since 1930s

Nearly one in 10 of those living in the United States is foreign-born, the United States’ highest percentage of immigrants since the 1930s, according to a new Census Bureau report.

The census report, which makes no distinction between legal and illegal immigrants, confirms the long-held image of newcomers pulling themselves up from economic hardship over time. Though large numbers of immigrants initially suffer from poverty and unemployment, those who arrived in the 1970s now are as financially stable as natives, the study found.

Nor is the unemployment rate inordinately high among immigrants. Just under 5 percent of the foreign-born were out of work when the census survey was conducted in March 1996, compared with just less than 4 percent among the native-born population.

The report also offers vivid evidence of the changing origins of the nation’s latest immigration wave. More than one-quarter were born in Mexico (27 percent), 12 percent came from Central America or South America and 27 percent came from Asia. In contrast, as recently as the 1950s, three-quarters of immigrants came from Europe and Canada.

The new report comes at a time when large-scale immigration has raised concerns among many native-born Americans. Proposals surfaced in Congress last year to limit legal immigration into the country, although those efforts eventually were defeated. Also, welfare reform legislation signed by President Clinton last year severely restricted the public benefits available to noncitizens.

As debate continues over such issues, the Census Bureau has begun more frequent data collection about the immigrant population.

“There’s a lot of interest in immigration at the current time,” said Kristin A. Hansen, a census researcher who authored the new report. “We needed to have some data so people can make decisions based on fact rather than anecdotal evidence.”

According to the report:

The foreign-born make up 9.3 percent of the U.S. population, a dramatic increase from the 4.8 percent figure in 1970 but still below the peak of about 15 percent during the great migrations early this century. In raw numbers, 24,557,000 U.S. residents are foreign born.

Overall, 32.2 percent of the foreign-born have become citizens. That percentage rises with length of stay, in part because immigrants must be residents for at least five years to apply for citizenship.

Latinos, who can be of any race, accounted for 40 percent of the nation’s immigrant population. By race, 68 percent of the immigrants were white, 24 percent were Asian and Pacific Islander, 8 percent were black.

Foreign-born persons are just as likely as those born in this country to obtain college degrees - the figure for both groups among those at least 25 years old is about 24 percent.

But immigrants also are much less likely to have high school diplomas - among the native-born population, 84 percent of those over 25 have diplomas; among immigrants, the figure drops to 64.4 percent.

Of the immigrant population, 5.8 percent receive cash income from welfare programs, compared with 4.5 percent of those born in this country.

Immigrants who arrived here in the 1970s had a 1995 median annual income of $17,403; the figure for those born here was $17,835. The median annual income for immigrants who came to the United States since 1990 was $10,875.

The poverty rate for immigrants was 22.2 percent, compared with 12.9 percent for the American-born.

Not surprisingly, pro- and anti-immigration advocacy groups focused on different findings in the report.

For Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the relatively high level of poverty among immigrants causes concern.

“Any immigration policy that is not designed to serve the interests of the nation is going to have consequences for the nation,” Mehlman said. “We are going to see increases in poverty, crime, social divisions and schools that can’t keep up with the burden.”

Frank Sharry, executive director for the National Immigration Forum, said that looking at the poverty among new immigrants, rather than how they improve their economic conditions over time, is unfair.

“The weaknesses of many studies that look at immigration earnings is that they are snapshots,” Sharry said. “When you take a moving picture of how people move up the ladder, then you really capture the immigrant experience. It’s a phenomenal situation that should make America proud of the contributions immigrants make.”