New US census figures that provide a snapshot of the US’ foreign-born population are challenging conventional views of immigration, race and ethnicity.
What it means to be African-American, for example, may be redefined by the record number of blacks —- now nearly 1 in 10 — born abroad, the report from American Community Survey data released on Wednesday shows. It found that Africa now accounts for one in three foreign-born blacks in the US, another modern record.
More than 1 in 50 Americans now identify themselves as “multiracial.” But the pattern of race reporting for foreign-born Americans, is markedly different than for native-born Americans. The foreign-born are more likely to list their nation of origin when identifying race or ethnicity.
For example, while 87 percent of Americans born in Cuba and 53 percent born in Mexico identified themselves as white, a majority born in the Dominican Republic and El Salvador, who are newer immigrants, described themselves as neither black nor white.
“The concept of race and how we view it culturally has changed,” said Elizabeth Grieco, chief of the Census Bureau’s immigration statistics staff, which analyzed 2007 data. “It’s a part of not knowing where they fit into how we define race in the United States.”
Recent arrivals “might not be sure how to classify themselves,” Grieco said.
The changing perception of race is being driven largely by immigration and higher birthrates among the foreign born. While immigrants account for 13 percent of the population, the share of recent births to foreign-born mothers rose to 20 percent. As a result of intermarriage with native-born Americans, a growing number of children — now more than one in four under the age of six — are being raised by at least one foreign-born parent.
“It’s fair to say that we are approaching the shares seen at the peak of the last great immigration wave” at the beginning of the 20th century, said Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center.
Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, noted that more that two-thirds of the growth of the Hispanic population last year came from births, not immigration.
“You could shut off immigration tomorrow and the impact of the foreign-born on US demographic trends would still be a powerful force,” he said.
Among the nation’s 37.3 million blacks, more than 8 percent are now foreign-born, compared with 1 percent in 1960. More than half came from the Caribbean. Some 34 percent emigrated from Africa, compared with 1 percent in 1960.
Seventy-eight percent of native-born Americans reported their race as white, followed by 13 percent who said they were black. Among the foreign-born, 46 percent identified themselves as white and 23 percent as Asian. Among all who identified themselves as Asian-Americans, which is often understood to mean born in the US, 67 percent were, in fact, foreign born.
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