COUNTY POPULATION
The population of King County was estimated by the Census Bureau at 1,826,732 residents as of July 2006. That was an increase of 1.8 percent from a year earlier and 5.2 percent above the 2000 Census.

Net international migration data understate the impact of immigration, because the children born to immigrants after their arrival are recorded as domestic population change -- not part of the immigrant settlement data.

According to the 2006 Census Bureau estimate, King County's population had increased since July 2000 despite a population loss from net domestic migration (an annual average of about 9,915 more native-born residents leaving than arriving). This was offset by natural change (an annual average of about 10,870 more births than deaths) and net international migration (an annual average of about 12,480 more foreign-born residents arriving than leaving). Therefore, immigration was the second largest component of population change, and it accounted directly for more than seven-eighths (87.7%) of the County’s population increase over this period.

The 2000 Census recorded 1,737,034 residents in the County. That was 15.2 percent more residents than the 1,507,305 in the 1990 Census. During the previous decade, the population of the County increased by 18.7 percent from 1,269,749 in 1980.

FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION
The 2000 census recorded 268,285 foreign-born residents in King County. That was a 15.4 percent share of the overall population, which was higher than for the state (10.4%). The 2000 data showed an increase of 90.8 percent in the immigrant population since 1990, which compared with an increase of 7.5 percent in the native-born population (which includes children born to immigrants) over the same period. That meant that the increase in the immigrant population directly accounted for 55.6 percent of the overall increase for the County.

In 2000, the Census recorded that nearly half (49.1%) of the County's foreign-born population had entered since 1990. This was a higher rate than for the state overall (46.6%). Over two-fifths (44.1%) of the foreign-born residents had become naturalized U.S. citizens. This was a higher share than for the state overall (39.2%).

Another indicator of the impact of the foreign-born population may be seen in data on residents who speak a language other than English at home. In King County in 2000, the share of other-than-English speakers at home (age 5 and older) was 18.4 percent. More than two-fifths (45.9%) of those persons described themselves as speaking English less than very well.

In 1990, the foreign-born population was 140,611 residents. This number of immigrants ranked King County 27^th in the country. The share of the population that was foreign born was 9.3 percent. By comparison, the foreign-born population shares of the state and the country in 1990, respectively, were 6.6 percent and 7.9 percent.

LEGAL IMMIGRATION
A study released by the Center for Immigration Studies in October 2001 indicated that there were 61,739 legal immigrants who indicated that they intended to settle in King County between FY'91-'98. This number did not include persons granted legal immigrant status as a result of the 1986 amnesty for illegal aliens. The ten countries that supplied the largest number of these new immigrants are shown below. Other countries that supplied more than 1,000 of the counties new immigrants during this period were United Kingdom (1,151) and Somalia (1,087).

REFUGEES
King County has been sanctuary to 40,000 refugees fleeing persecution in the last 15 years.
(Source: The Seattle Times, October 10, 1993)

POPULATION PROJECTION 2025
The current rate of population change between 1990-00, if continued, would result in a population in 2025 of 2,475,000. That is a 42.5 percent increase over the 2000 population.