Guess Who's Coming to the United States

Please note: This blog post was originally published on Sunday, July 18, 2010.

Ever wonder how many people get green cards in the U.S. in a year?

In 2009, the number was 1.1 million, slightly above the numbers in 2007 and 2008.

     And what countries did the immigrants come from? Did the number of immigrants coming from one country exceed 50% of the total?

Hardly! Only 15% of last year’s immigrants were born in Mexico. The other top countries of birth were China, the Philippines, India, and the Dominican Republic, each of which accounted for 4-6% of the new immigrants.

In total, 37% of the new immigrants are Asian, while 31% are from North America.

And most of the new immigrants settled in Arizona, right?

Not even close! The top destinations were California (20%), New York (13%), Florida (11%), Texas (8%), and New Jersey (5%). So, all in all, most immigrants settled in these five states.

Most new immigrants are women (54.6%), a percentage greater than that of the native-born population (51%). Almost 58% of the new immigrants are married, as opposed to only 39% of the native-born population.

The median age of immigrants is lower (31 years) than that of the native-born population (35 years).

And do any of the statistics tell us why the line for employment-based (EB) immigrants is becoming so backlogged? Yes, the annual quota for EB immigrants deceased from 162,704 in 2008 to 140,000 in 2009.  Now, that’s something that Congress may want to look into.

Oh, I know what you are asking yourself: where did Shusterman get all of these numbers, probably from the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association, right?

Good guess, but wrong.

They came from a report issued this spring by the United States Department of Homeland Security!