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About Latino Immigration
About Latino Immigration
There are about 42.7 million Hispanics living in the
United States as of
July 1, 2005, making people of Hispanic origin the nation’s largest ethnic or race minority. Hispanics constituted 14% of the nation’s total population. (This estimate does not include the 3.9 million residents of
Puerto Rico.)
New York City is already 28% Hispanic, with some two million Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Colombians and other Central Americans.
Los Angeles is more than 40% Hispanic,
Miami more than 50%.
California,
New York, Texas and
Florida contain more than 60% of the nation’s Latinos. In fact, in both
California and
Texas, one of every four residents is Latino.
The majority of Hispanics in the United States are not immigrants. According to 2004 census data, 60% of the more than 40 million Hispanics in this country were born here. Of the 40% who were born elsewhere, the majority are legal immigrants. Hispanics have been very successful in assimilating into the U.S.—8 out of 10 speak English as well as Spanish. The Pew Hispanic Center shows that by the third generation, 100% of Latinos speak English as their first and often only language. This is the precise assimilation pattern for every other foreign-language immigrant group in this country.
