Migration and Immigration
(April 2009) Both changes in immigration patterns and internal migration affect U.S. population growth and composition. Net in-migration accounts for a larger share of U.S. population growth today than it did fifty years ago. Also, as natural increase has declined, the impact of migration within the U.S. on local and regional differences in population growth and on the changing geographic distribution of minority racial and ethnic populations has increased.
Immigration to the United States has increased the foreign-born as a share of the U.S. population from about 5 percent in 1970 to almost 13 percent in 2005-2007 period. With the return of immigration to pre-1940 levels, the number of immigrant children resident in the United States has also grown. Today, one in every five children in the United States resides in an immigrant family. These children are a diverse group--some immigrated as children, and others are U.S. citizens born to at least one foreign-born parent. A greater proportion of these children live in poverty than do non-Hispanic white children living in native-born families (Van Hook, Brown, Kwenda, 2004; Lichter, Qian, Crowley, 2005). Their experience of poverty puts these children at higher risk for developmental problems and difficulties in school.