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North Carolina was largely untouched by the first two waves of immigration to the United States. Between 1840 and 1889, the U.S. received 14.3 million immigrants, the majority from Northern/Western European countries such as Germany, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Between 1890 and 1919, another 18.2 million arrived, mainly from Southern/Eastern European countries such as Italy, Russia, and Poland. Yet, in 1920, fewer than 10,000 of the nation’s 14.2 million immigrants lived in North Carolina.…
The size of the U.S. immigrant population—more than 40 million in the 2012 American Community Survey—is the largest it has ever been. But the immigrant share of the total population, just under 13%, is still less than its historic peak in 1910, when 14.8% or more than 1 in 7 individuals were foreign-born. More than 750,000 immigrants lived in North Carolina in 2012, representing 1 of every 13 North Carolinians. Unlike the country as a…
Between 2006 and 2011, growth in the U.S. population of children ages 0 to 17 was entirely due to growth in the number of children born to at least one immigrant parent. Over these 5 years, the population of children of immigrants grew 1.5 million, from 15.7 to 17.2 million. Nationally, the population of children of native-born parents fell slightly over this time period, from 55.6 to 55.0 million. In North Carolina, these trends are…
I’ve heard someone joke that, prior to 1980, there were two languages spoken in North Carolina: English and bad English. This probably runs fairly true to most people’s day-to-day experiences before the more recent wave of immigration. In 1980, just over 2% of North Carolina residents age 5 and older, or 130,640 individuals, spoke a language other than English at home. Today, nearly 11% speak a language other than English at home, representing nearly a…
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