New Mexico the only state to see drop in immigrants

A new report by the U.S. Census Bureau shows New Mexico is far from being a haven for immigrants. In fact, the Land of Enchantment ranks as the only state to see a decrease in its immigrant population over the past 10 years.

The number of foreign-born people in the United States rose by more than 5 million over 10 years to 45.3 million, or 13.7% of the nation’s population, according to the 2018-2022 five-year American Community Survey (ACS) estimates.

New Mexico’s population is up to about 9.3% foreign born, according to a story Friday by Newsweek magazine. There was a reported loss of 6,218 immigrants here from a decade ago.

Chris Erickson, director of the Center for Border Economic Development at New Mexico State University, said the decrease is “surprising.”

He said he believes the number of undocumented immigrants in the state may have been under-reported given the reluctance of those living here illegally to provide their status to census workers.

Erickson said he thinks New Mexico per capita has more undocumented people living here than other border states, given the state’s proximity to the border.

Nevertheless, Erickson said the census estimates “reflects a problem with our economy” such as low per capita income, and 81 to 82 percent disposable income compared to the national average.

Immigrants made up over a fifth of the population in four states: California (26.5%), New Jersey (23.2%), New York (22.6%) and Florida (21.1%).Their numbers grew in all four states over the 10-year span.

University of New Mexico associate professor Loren Collingwood agreed on Friday the economy could play a role in the reduced numbers.

“The New Mexico economy is not as strong as say California or Texas. So a lot of foreign born residents are going to move to places for jobs, whether that’s people coming from Latin America or people emigrating from Asia, India, China, places like that.”

He suggested that because New Mexico is “a fairly small population state that has a higher margin of error” what appears to be a drop isn’t.

“It’s probably more likely that the foreign-born population has basically held constant,” Collingwood told the Journal.

The estimate for the foreign born population in New Mexico was 9.3 percent, plus or minus 0.5 percent. Of that population, 43.9 percent were naturalized U.S. citizens, with 56.1 percent not a U.S. citizen.

The report compared estimates for the 2018-2022 period to a 5-year period a decade earlier (2008-2012). Nationally, there were 39.8 million foreign-born people, or 12.9% of the population in that time period.

The foreign-born population consists of anyone living in the United States who was not a U.S. citizen at birth, including naturalized U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents (immigrants), temporary migrants such as foreign students, humanitarian migrants such as refugees and asylees, and unauthorized migrants. Estimates in the data visualization exclude those born at sea.

Highlights of the foreign-born population in 2018-2022 compared to 2008-2012:

California, Florida, New Jersey and Texas had the largest increases, with Florida and Texas each gaining more than 850,000 foreign-born people.

Almost half (49.1%) of all immigrants in the United States entered the country before 2000.

More than half (52.3%) were naturalized U.S. citizens.

Nearly a quarter of the foreign-born population 25 years and older had a bachelor’s (18.7%) or graduate or professional degree (14.9%), compared to 21.4% and 13.1% for the native-born population.

An estimated 63.5% were employed, with over a third of the civilian employed foreign-born population (16 years and older) in management, business, science and arts occupations.

The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates that as of 2021, more than 1 million (9 percent) of the estimated 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States were from South America.

The institute reported that the top countries of birth for South Americans living in the United States without legal status were Venezuela (251,000), Colombia (201,000), and Brazil (195,000).