Foreign Born Population Has Reached Levels not Seen Since the 1920s

One in Eight Residents Foreign Born as U.S. Population Explodes

(Washington, D.C. - August 2, 2007 )

Apologists for current mass immigration have consistently argued that as a percentage of the overall U.S. population, immigrants constitute a smaller share of the population than they did in the early part of the 20th century. That has changed, finds a new study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). According to the report The Immigrant Population of the United States in 2006, the 37.4 million foreign born residents, as a percentage of the total population, is higher than any level since 1920. Approximately one in eight U.S. residents in 2006 was an immigrant, finds the study.

The Immigrant Population of the United States in 2006 finds that the impact of today's mass immigration flow is being felt in all parts of the country. While the handful of states that have traditionally served as gateways to new immigrants continue in that role, there has been exponential growth of the foreign born population since the 2000 Census in parts of the country where there had previously been moderate levels of immigrants. In nine states immigration accounted for more than half the population increase since 2000, and in two states — New York and Massachusetts as well as the District of Columbia, the net increase in immigrants exceeded the total increase in population.

"In absolute numbers, the wave of mass immigration we are experiencing today has far exceeded the levels of the wave that arrived here a century ago," noted Dan Stein, president of FAIR. "The surge in immigration has been so large and so sustained over the past 40 years that even though the population of the United States is about triple what it was in 1920, the foreign born, as a percentage of our total population, is back to where it was some 90 years ago."

The excessive level of immigration a century ago led to enactment of a 40-year hiatus from mass immigration. During the period from the mid-1920s to the mid-1960s, the nation had an opportunity to absorb the immigrants and their children into the social and economic mainstream of the country. "This nation needs a similar pause from mass immigration to allow the absorption and assimilation process to work again," said Stein.

Calls to curtail mass immigration a century ago stemmed from the fact that concentrations of immigrants in some parts of the country were so large that it made absorption and assimilation impossible. "We are seeing that same phenomenon today," observed Stein. "In California the foreign born constitute more than a quarter of the population. In some of our largest cities, the foreign born population and their children now account for the majority of the population. America has been built on the concept that immigrants should be incorporated as Americans. At current immigration levels, in many parts of the country, Americans are being challenged to either accept the cultures and languages of the immigrants, or relocate themselves. For the good of the nation and the immigrants themselves, it is time to cut back," said Stein.