U.S. Has Highest Share of Foreign-Born Since 1910

I'm teaching immigration in my classes this week, so I took note of this piece at the New York Times from a couple of weeks ago.

It's fascinating, especially the share of immigrants from Asia.

I'm telling you, Irvine is practically Beijing west. The city is an Asian-majority burg, and it's trippy. Lots of folks wear hospital mask all the time, even while driving their cars (remember, the air quality in China is terrible). Also, lots of folks don't speak English. The kids are bilingual, but the parents, and for sure the grandparents, don't. I can go shopping, hitting two or three different stores, including Walmart, and not hear anyone speaking English.

At some point you'd like immigration rates to slow down, and remember, this is legal immigration. The numbers are too high. Assimilation is breaking down where I live. Let's slow things down. It's a national problem, but I'm seeing things close up right here in the O.C.

In any case, see "U.S. Has Highest Share of Foreign-Born Since 1910, With More Coming From Asia":

The foreign-born population in the U.S. has reached its highest share since 1910, according to government data, and the new arrivals are more likely to come from Asia and to have college degrees than those who arrived in past decades https://t.co/mqZE2cGOZt

— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 13, 2018

WASHINGTON — The foreign-born population in the United States has reached its highest share since 1910, according to government data released Thursday, and the new arrivals are more likely to come from Asia and to have college degrees than those who arrived in past decades.

The Census Bureau’s figures for 2017 confirm a major shift in who is coming to the United States. For years newcomers tended to be from Latin America, but a Brookings Institution analysis of that data shows that 41 percent of the people who said they arrived since 2010 came from Asia. Just 39 percent were from Latin America. About 45 percent were college educated, the analysis found, compared with about 30 percent of those who came between 2000 and 2009.

“This is quite different from what we had thought,” said William H. Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution who conducted the analysis. “We think of immigrants as being low-skilled workers from Latin America, but for recent arrivals that’s much less the case. People from Asia have overtaken people from Latin America.”

The new data was released as the nation’s changing demography has become a flash point in American politics. President Trump, and many Republicans, have sounded alarms about immigration and suggested the government needs to restrict both the number and types of people coming into the country.

The foreign-born population stood at 13.7 percent in 2017, or 44.5 million people, according to the data, compared with 13.5 percent in 2016...

Still more.