The Foreign Born Population In The United States

Immigration has always been a source of debate for the American public. During the early part of the 20th century Americans had concerns about the effects of European immigrants. Today similar concerns are being raised about Latin American immigrants. This book presents selected decennial census data on the foreign-born population of the United States from 1850 to 2000. This book provides the background knowledge necessary to examine the tables in a detailed and informed manner. The tables provide statistics that reveal all the trends in immigration during the last century of America's history. It is fully indexed.

This brief represents a comprehensive review of methods for estimating characteristics of the foreign-born population in the United States, specifically oriented toward characteristics by legal status. A variety of methods have been proffered over the past many decades, in a large variety of venues; this work brings them together, attempts to impart some order on the definition of “legal status,” and describes strengths and deficiencies both in methods and in data. The authors have a combined 50 years of experience in both demographic and statistical methodology.