More than 20% U.S. Residents 1st, 2nd Generation

The U.S. Census Bureau reported that 37 million people in the United States are immigrants in 2009, that’s 12%.  Perhaps more interesting, 33 million people, 11%, were born in the U.S. but have at least one parent who was born elsewhere, meaning that one of five, that’s 20%, are first- or second- generation Americans.

Incidentally, more than half of these immigrants were coming from Latin America, about one-third from Mexico, and one in three entered in 2000 or later.  More than half of the immigrants in question were not citizens.

These second generation Americans tend to do better than their parents, in other words, these immigrants are achieving the “American Dream.”  In the words of Chief of the Census Bureau’s Foreign-Born Population Branch Elizabeth M. Grieco, “What these data show is that, generally speaking, income and other measures of achievement, such as education, increase between first and second generation.  This suggests that the children of immigrants are continuing to assimiliate over time as they have in past generations.”

See the whole release here.