States radically diverging in terms of immigrant percentage

by philg

This chart shows that, as of 5-10 years ago, the experience of living in California would involve finding an immigrant family in every fourth house (3 native-born families and then 1 immigrant).

The experience of living in Ohio, on the other hand, would involve finding 1 immigrant family per every 25 houses. In West Virginia it would be 1 per every 70 families.

(These per-house numbers need to be tweaked since fertility and family size are different for immigrant and native-born Americans, but I was too lazy to do the arithmetic. There is some state-by-state data available on this.)

(All of these percentages are likely higher in 2018 due to historically high levels of immigration continuing; see Pew Research for the trend since 1990. My home state of Massachusetts went from 9.5 percent immigrant to 15.1 percent over a 22-year period. My birth state of Maryland went from 6.6 percent to 14.1.)

I wonder if this partly explains why Americans feel that they don’t have as much in common as they used to. When it comes to encountering immigrants as co-workers, neighbors, friends, competitors for jobs and real estate, etc., they really don’t have that much in common, especially if we were to zoom down to the county level. Americans are essentially living in different countries, one of which is substantially made up of immigrants and one of which is substantially made up of native-born people.

10 thoughts on “States radically diverging in terms of immigrant percentage”

  3. J: No need to do this work. Our tax dollars have already paid the U.S. Census Bureau, the good folks behind the American Community Survey on which the above references rely, to do the definitional work.

    https://www.census.gov/topics/population/foreign-born/about.html#par_textimage explains…

    The U.S. Census Bureau uses the term foreign born to refer to anyone who is not a U.S. citizen at birth. This includes naturalized U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents (immigrants), temporary migrants (such as foreign students), humanitarian migrants (such as refugees and asylees), and unauthorized migrants.

    The Census Bureau collects data from all foreign born who participate in its censuses and surveys, regardless of legal status. Thus, unauthorized migrants are implicitly included in Census Bureau estimates of the total foreign-born population, although it is not possible to tabulate separate estimates of unauthorized migrants or any other legal status category.

  4. In addition to the quantity, the qualitative differences between different “foreign born” cannot be overstated. The experience of sharing an apartment building with German engineers legally working for a US subsidiary is vastly different from living alongside jihad-minded Somalis.

    • We are not allowed to prefer high-skill immigrants from Ontario to Dhokar Tsarnaev and his family or someone named “the soldier of Allah” from Uzbekistan. That would obviously be racist.

  5. If you live in the South most of your neighbors are recently relocated from up North or from way down south (Hispanic). Not complaining, just pointing out reality. Sometimes I wonder how there can be anyone left in Ohio and several other northern states. So…YES…you tend to have a lot less in common with your neighbors.

  6. Look at San Diego and Los Angeles demographics now versus what they were just 50 years ago. LA today is 50% Hispanic and 12% Asian. So more than 1/2 the population identifies as foreign born. In 1970 LA was less than 20% Hispanic and Asian. So basically today immigrants are the majority and manage things accordingly. English is a second language in many schools and suburbs.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles#Demographics

    SD today has similar number. It is estimated at 50% Hispanic and Asian. So 1 in 2. In 1970 SD was only 10% or so immigrants. The big thing that has happened is Hispanics now make up about 34% of the population (up from 10%) and Asians make up 12% (up from 2%).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Diego#Demographics
    https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/dam/sdc/hhsa/programs/phs/CHS/demographics/FINAL_2016_Demographic_Profiles_1.30.18.pdf

    • Look at San Diego and Los Angeles demographics now versus what they were just 50 years ago. LA today is 50% Hispanic and 12% Asian. So more than 1/2 the population identifies as foreign born.

      You’re making the assumption that all Hispanics and Asians in LA are foreign born. That’s incorrect.

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