This is really amazing. I just saw this article about a new Census report. According to the report, there are 33 million foreign-born people living in the US; or about 11% of the total US population.
That’s nearly the entire population of Canada!
I’ve always been proud of and fascinated by the cultural diversity in America (especially living in NYC) but I had no idea we had this many immigrants these days. If I had to guess, I would have said the number was probably closer to 10 million.
This is why it really steams me when people make comparisons between other countries and the United States. The US has a very big immigrant population, and a LOT of diversity. There are a lot of issues that come up with such a diverse and large population. I too find it fascinating that the United States has such a large population, both numbers-wise and diversity wise.
I can be in a classroom of 30 people, and those 30 people all were born in a different country. That’s pretty interesting. In Elementary school, when we had a project on ethnic origins, everybody had a unique project because there were not two children with similar ethnic origins in the whole class!
The reason your estimate was lower than the actual number probably has to do with the fact that for every foreign born person you meet there is a whole truckload of foreign born relatives you didn’t meet.
Well for just that same comparison, in the 2001 census 4.2 million or 23% of Australians were born overseas . 40% of Australians were born overseas or have a parent who was born overseas.
Recent stats indicate that 41% of the population of L.A. is foreign born. Not children of immigrants. Not members of ESL households. But new immigrants.
