WASHINGTON – America’s growing diversity has reached nearly every state.
From South Carolina’s budding immigrant population to the fast-rising number of Hispanics in Arkansas, minority groups make up an increasing share of the population in every state but one, according to figures being released today by the Census Bureau.
“This is just an extraordinary explosion of diversity all across the United States,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “It’s diversity and immigration going hand in hand.”
West Virginia is the exception, with its struggling economy and little history of attracting immigrants.
Nationally, immigrants went from 11.1 percent of the population in 2000 to 12.4 percent last year.
The survey, which cost $170 million in 2005, has limitations. For example, only people living in households were surveyed. That excludes the 3 percent of people who live in nursing homes, hospitals, college dormitories, military barracks, prisons and other dwellings known as group quarters.
Also, the numbers for Gulf Coast states do not reflect the effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which scattered hundreds of thousands of people last year.
Hispanics increased their hold as the country’s largest minority group, at 14.5 percent of the population, compared with 12.8 percent for blacks.
Hispanic is a term for people with ethnic backgrounds in Spanish-speaking countries. Hispanics can be of any race, and most in the U.S. are white. When demographers talk about the shrinking percentage of white people in America, generally they are talking about whites who are not Hispanic.
Such whites are a minority in four states – Hawaii, New Mexico, California and Texas – and the District of Columbia. The share of white people fell below 60 percent in three other states: Maryland, Georgia and Nevada. Nationally, non-Hispanic whites make up about 67 percent of the population, down from 70 percent at the start of the decade.
California, New York, Texas and Florida have the nation’s largest immigrant populations. The new data show that immigrants will travel beyond those states if there are jobs available.
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