U.S. Saw Biggest Immigration Rise In History In '90s

June 5, 2002
By EDWARD HEGSTROM

The nation's immigrant population grew by more than 11 million people in the 1990s, the highest increase in history, according to Census 2000 data released Tuesday.

More than one in 10 people living in the country are now foreign born, and more than half of those immigrants come from Latin America, the data show.

Critics immediately seized on the figures as further evidence of a flawed national immigration policy that will lead to the overcrowding of America.

"We've never had a situation where immigration is the determining factor in population growth," said Steven Camarota, with the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington group that favors reducing immigration levels. By adding the influx of immigrants with U.S. births to immigrant mothers, Camarota concludes that more than 60 percent of the nation's population increase over the past 10 years can be equated with immigration.

Others were not quite so alarmed by the numbers.

"I think we need to recognize that our population needs to be internationalized as our economy is internationalized," said Steve Murdock, director of the Texas State Data Center at Texas A&M University.

Murdock says it is important to look at the number of immigrants in comparison to the overall population. In those terms, the latest immigration influx beginning in the 1970s still does not compare with the boom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In percentage terms, the all-time high came in 1890, when 14.8 percent of the people living in the United States were born in another country. But the number from the 2000 Census, 11.1 percent, is the highest in the last 70 years.

The 2.9 million immigrants living in Texas place the state third behind New York and California. And Houston is by far the most immigrant-rich city in the state.

With a foreign-born population of 516,000, Houston has nearly four times the number of immigrants as San Antonio. San Antonio has a large number of Hispanics, but many of them have lived there for generations.

Some economists say a growing immigrant population provides a growing labor market to offset the aging native-born population. But a number of political groups have formed in recent years under the belief that a growing immigrant population will lead to problems for America.

Project U.S.A., a New York-based organization, sometimes places billboards with messages such as: "In Your 20s? Immigration will double the U.S. population in your lifetime."

Even in Houston, normally known as an immigrant-friendly city, a recent survey found an increasing number of people want to reduce immigration levels.

Camarota believes politicians need to pay more attention to the polls showing opposition to the current immigration policy.

"What we have now is a situation where there's an elite consensus (in favor of immigration) and then there's what the average person thinks, which is very different," he said.

Chronicle reporter Dan Feldstein contributed to this story. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/front/1439404