Are You an Immigrant? 24% of Readers Say “Yes”

May 1: Protesters on the north side of The White House during a rally against the recently passed Arizona law pertaining to illegal immigrants. (Luis Gomez Photos)

Last week’s reader poll asked, “Are you an immigrant?” It turns out that about one in four of the Borderstan readers who responded is an immigrant, 24% to be exact. More specifically, 14% of poll respondents are naturalized citizens and 10% are legal residents. In addition, 17% have at least one parent who is an immigrant.

A 2006 estimate put the number of immigrants in the DC metro area at one million in a metro-area population of 5.1 million, almost 20%. In DC, there are an estimated 75,000 immigrants out of 600,000 people, about 13%. These numbers compare to the U.S. population where a 2007 estimate put the number of foreign-born at 37 million, about 12% percent of the population.