By Sharon Simonson
A record 42.2 million foreign-born people live in the United States making up 13.2 percent of the population, according to new findings from The Pew Research Center based on U.S. Census data.
With 27 percent of California’s total population foreign-born — or not quite 10.5 million people — the state has more immigrants numerically than any other state and the greatest proportion of its total residents who are immigrants.
One in five people (or nearly that many) living in New York, New Jersey, Florida and Nevada also are foreign-born. West Virginia has the lowest portion of foreign-born people at 1.4 percent of the state’s total 1.8 million residents, Pew reports.
The number of foreign-born people living in the U.S. has grown fourfold since 1960 when not quite 10 million immigrants accounted for 5.4 percent of the U.S. population.
The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2060, nearly one in five people living in the United States will be foreign-born, or 78 million people.