In 1907
over a
million immigrants came to America through Ellis Island, the largest
number
of immigrants in any one year of the history of that immigration
station. Those immigrants were made up mostly of
persons from Italy, Poland, Germany, and England and they helped weave
the
fabric of what America is today. Now, 103 years later, the nationalities
of our
immigrant population are completely different. In fact, not one of the
immigrant
nationalities from 1907 even cracks the list of the top 10 nationalities
either
legally or illegally immigrating to the U.S. today.
LEGAL IMMIGRANTS
Anyone who has gone through the
Immigration process in the U.S. knows it’s not for the faint of heart.
Yet no
matter how difficult the process, there is no shortage of applicants. Combining all those who received Legal
Permanent Residence (i.e. green card) and all those who were naturalized
(i.e.
became citizens) in 2009, our total immigration tally was nearly 1.9
million
persons. The breakdowns of the top 10 countries that make up those
immigrants are*:
|
Country
|
#
|
% of total
|
|
Mexico
|
276,550
|
14.8%
|
|
India
|
110,193
|
5.9%
|
|
China
|
101,368
|
5.4%
|
|
Philippines
|
98,963
|
5.3%
|
|
Dominican Republic
|
70,192
|
3.7%
|
|
Cuba
|
63,845
|
3.4%
|
|
Vietnam
|
60,402
|
3.2%
|
|
Colombia
|
44,442
|
2.4%
|
|
South Korea
|
43,435
|
2.3%
|
|
Haiti
|
24,280
|
1.3%
|
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
Gathering a true picture of the number of Illegal Immigrants is
notoriously
challenging and fraught with error, but the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security attempts
to
estimate this yearly. (OhMyGov has also reported on other efforts
to
measure the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. which suggested far
higher
numbers.) From these estimates, the top 10 countries that make up
the illegal population in the U.S are as follows*:
|
Country
|
#
|
% of total
|
|
Mexico
|
6,650,000
|
61.9%
|
|
El Salvador
|
530,000
|
4.9%
|
|
Guatemala
|
480,000
|
4.5%
|
|
Honduras.
|
320,000
|
3.0%
|
|
Philippines
|
270,000
|
2.5%
|
|
India
|
200,000
|
1.9%
|
|
Korea
|
200,000
|
1.9%
|
|
Ecuador
|
170,000
|
1.6%
|
|
Brazil
|
150,000
|
1.4%
|
|
China
|
120,000
|
1.1%
|
Mexico tops both of the charts, and it’s also been
well
documented that the number of U.S. residents of Mexican origin is growing rapidly. Mexican-Americans now make up 10%
of the
entire American population.
Population growth in and of itself does not tell
the whole
story, more pertinent is looking at how the growth in the
Mexican-American
population compares to the population growth as a whole.
It’s plain to see why there is such passionate and
heated
debate over immigration, especially when as of late; it seems to come
largely
from one specific country. When
you add in the reports of violence and the new Arizona law that allows
police
to check suspected illegals for proper identification, you’ve reached
the
boiling point.
What conclusions should be drawn from these
statistics? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
*Data gathered from the Department of Homeland
Security
website and can be found here: http://www.dhs.gov/files/statistics/data/
