Thread: Miss. has highest % increase in immigrants

http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp ... iv=Opinion

SID SALTER: Mississippi has highest percentage increase in immigrants
10/25/2006 3:47:48 AM
Daily Journal




If anyone thinks immigration is going away as a political issue on the federal or the state level anytime soon, they obviously haven’t been watching the numbers.
The Center for Immigration Studies has produced a study that puts a clearer perspective on the genesis of immigration as a major political issue both in Congress and the state Legislature.
From 2000 to 2005, the nation’s immigrant population increased by 5.1 million from 29.9 million to 35.2 million – a percentage increase of 17.2 percent.
In the aggregate, Mississippi isn’t a major player in immigration growth. California and Texas continue to see the highest aggregate growth in immigration with some 931,000 new immigrants in California (10.3 percent growth) and 788,000 new immigrants in Texas (30.4 percent growth) between 2000 and 2005.
But in terms of the percentage of immigrant population growth, Mississippi led the nation with an increase between 2000 and 2005 from 29,000 to 72,000 immigrants, or 148.7 percent, according to the CIS study. That’s the highest rate of immigrant population growth in the nation and moore than eight times the national average.
For those who would assign that extremely high rate of growth to the crying need for laborers on the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it’s important to note that the CIS study was done in March of 2005, some six months before the worst natural disaster in American history dismantled coastal Mississippi.
Given the magnitude of the recovery and rebuilding efforts in south Mississippi, the notion that Mississippi’s immigrant population hasn’t increased significantly over pre-Katrina levels would seem absurd.
The study, entitled “Immigrants at Mid-Decade: A Snapshot of America’s Foreign-Born Population in 2005,” was authored by CIS director of research Steven A. Camorota. Key findings of the study include:
The 35.2 million immigrants (legal and illegal) living in the country in March 2005 is the highest number ever recorded – two and a half times the 13.5 million during the peak of the last great immigration wave in 1910.
Between January 2000 and March 2005, 7.9 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) settled in the country, making it the highest five-year period of immigration in American history.
Nearly half of post-2000 arrivals (3.7 million) are estimated to be illegal aliens.
Immigrants account for 12.1 percent of the total population, the highest percentage in eight decades. If current trends continue, within a decade it will surpass the high of 14.7 percent reached in 1910.
Of adult immigrants, 31 percent have not completed high school, three-and-a-half times the rate for natives. Since 1990, immigration has increased the number of such workers by 25 percent, while increasing the supply of all other workers by 6 percent.
The poverty rate for immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 1 is 18.4 percent, 57 percent higher than the 11.7 percent for natives and their children. Immigrants and their minor children account for almost one in four persons living in poverty nationally.
States with the largest increase in immigrants are California, Texas Georgia, New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Washington, Virginia, Arizona, Tennessee, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Mississippi.
The Washington-based CIS is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization founded in 1985 that is the nation’s only think tank devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of immigration on the U.S.
With Mississippi scrambling for public education and Medicaid dollars and rebuilding from Katrina, immigration looms as a hot political issues from the statehouse to the courthouses. State legislative races certainly won’t escape voter inquiries about immigration fears.
Meanwhile, Mississippi’s immigrant population keeps growing.

Mississippi?? Katrina money.