Look around your town, your neighborhood, or even your classroom: How many people do you know who were born in another country or are the children of people born somewhere else?
Chances are it’s more than a few. According to the federal government, the share of the United States population that’s foreign-born—13.7 percent—is now greater than it’s been in more than a century. Not since 1910, when immigrants seeking the American dream were streaming into Ellis Island in New York Harbor, has so big a percentage of the population been foreign-born.
It’s not just that the immigrant population of the U.S. is bigger—it’s changing too. For years, the biggest chunk of newcomers came from Latin America, but new Census numbers show that Asians are now the biggest group of new immigrants. The data also shows that these more recent immigrants are better educated than previous generations of immigrants: About 45 percent have college degrees, compared with 30 percent of native-born Americans.
“We think of immigrants as being low-skilled workers from Latin America, but for recent arrivals, that’s much less the case,” says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who analyzed the new census data. “People from Asia have overtaken people from Latin America.”
The new data comes as the nation’s changing demography has become a flash point in American politics. President Trump has sounded alarms about immigration and suggested the government needs to restrict both the number and types of people coming into the country and obtaining citizenship.
Look around your town, your neighborhood, or even your classroom. How many people do you know who were born in another country or are the children of people born somewhere else?
Chances are it’s more than a few. According to the federal government, 13.7 percent of the United States population is foreign-born. That share is now greater than it’s been since 1910, when immigrants seeking the American dream streamed into Ellis Island in New York Harbor.
It’s not just that the immigrant population of the U.S. is bigger—it’s changing too. For years, the biggest chunk of newcomers came from Latin America. But new census numbers show that Asians are now the biggest group of new immigrants. The data also shows that these more recent immigrants are better educated than previous generations of immigrants. About 45 percent of them have college degrees, compared with 30 percent of native-born Americans.
“We think of immigrants as being low-skilled workers from Latin America, but for recent arrivals, that’s much less the case,” says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who analyzed the new census data. “People from Asia have overtaken people from Latin America.”
The new data comes as the nation’s changing demography has become a flash point in American politics. President Trump has sounded alarms about immigration. He’s also suggested the government needs to restrict both the number and types of people coming into the country and obtaining citizenship.