If Miami-Dade County's nearly 1.2 million foreign-born residents comprised a city of their own, that city would be among the 10 largest in the nation. This example of the expanding presence of Florida's foreign-born residents was only part of the story, however, as the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) revealed today that America now has 33 million residents who are natives of other countries.

    "These data provide a moving picture of one of the fastest growing population segments in the United States, and they give leaders in government and business the knowledge they need to plan for the changes that population growth brings," said Census Bureau Director Louis Kincannon.

    The ACS, which surveyed more than 742,000 American households in 2002, will expand to 3 million households nationwide next year and is slated to replace the census long form in 2010.

    Among states, California (26.9 percent) ranked first in the proportion of its population who were foreign-born. It was followed by New York (20.9 percent), New Jersey (18.9 percent) and Florida and Hawaii (17.9 percent each). (See Table 1.) States with some of the lowest foreign-born percentages included Mississippi (1.1 percent), West Virginia (1.2 percent) and Montana (1.6 percent).

    Of the top 10 counties with the largest proportions of foreign-born, other than Miami-Dade, all but one, Hudson County, N.J., were located in New York or California. (See Table 2.) Queens County, N.Y. (46.6 percent), had the second-highest percentage of foreign-born residents among the 231 counties ranked in the ACS; followed by Hudson (39.1 percent); Kings County, N.Y. (38 percent); and San Francisco County, Calif. (36.7 percent).

    In a ranking of large cities (with populations of 250,000 or more), the proportion of foreign- born in the city of Miami (60.6 percent) was greater than any other city in the nation, followed by Santa Ana, Calif. (48.4 percent), Los Angeles (41.3 percent); Anaheim, Calif. (40.3 percent); and San Francisco (36.7 percent). In fact, seven of the top 10 cities with the highest percentages of foreign-born were located in California. (See Table 3.) New York (36 percent) and Houston (28 percent) ranked seventh and ninth, while New Orleans, Memphis, Tenn., Louisville, Ky., and Toledo, Ohio, had some of the lowest percentages in the ranking of 68 cities.

    According to the survey, the foreign-born population grew to more than 33 million in 2002, slightly larger than the entire population of Canada. Of the total U.S. population, 11.8 percent were foreign-born and accounted for 44 percent of the nation's population growth last year. A majority of the foreign-born reside in four states: California (28 percent), New York (11.8 percent), Texas (9.8 percent) and Florida (8.9 percent).

    "The growth of the nation's foreign-born population reflects how attractive this country remains, both politically and economically, for people around the world," said Kincannon.

    Other survey highlights:

• The U.S. foreign-born population increased nearly 5 percent between 2001 and 2002.
• About 52 percent of the nation's foreign-born population is from Latin America, 27 percent from Asia and 15 percent from Europe.
• California (34.9 percent), New York (10.7 percent) and Texas (6 percent) have the largest shares of foreign-born population from Asia.
• Immigrants from Mexico comprise 30 percent of the nation's total foreign-born population, nearly 70 percent of whom live in three states: California (41 percent), Texas (21 percent)and Illinois (7 percent).
• The largest share of the foreign-born population in New York comes from the Caribbean (25.6 percent), followed by Asia (24.3 percent) and Europe (20.5 percent).
• More than 74 percent of all foreign-born Cubans reside in Florida, but Cubans represent just 22 percent of Florida's total foreign-born population.
• More than half of the total foreign-born population from El Salvador reside in just two states, California (40 percent) and Texas (14 percent). Other states with high percentages of Salvadoran foreign-born include New York (7 percent), Maryland (6.4 percent), Florida (4.8 percent) and the District of Columbia (4.4 percent).
• In Midwestern states, Iowa's foreign-born population increased an estimated 26 percent, to nearly 98,000 in 2002.
• Seventy-five percent of the foreign-born population in the West lived in California.

The 2002 ACS data were based on responses from a sample of the U.S. population. As with all surveys, the estimates and rankings may vary from the actual values because of sampling or nonsampling variations. The ACS ranking tables cover 231 counties and 68 cities.

Additional information and data profiles for the nation, states, counties and places can be accessed at <http://www.census.gov/acs/www> or <http://factfinder.census.gov>.