State Immigration Status

The four states with the highest percentage of immigrants might surprise you. These top four states all had percentages over 20 percent:  California (26.64), New Jersey (23.04), New York (22.32), and Florida (21.16). The national average for all states is just 9.41 percent which is over one percent higher than it was in 2006. In 2021 West Virginia and Wyoming had the lowest percentage of immigrants, with 1.6 and 3.4 percent respectively.  These percentages are for foreign-born residents, including both naturalized and non-citizens.

Foreign-born refers to "anyone who is not a U.S. citizen at birth," including naturalized citizens and non-citizens.

Naturalized citizen refers to anyone born as a citizen of another country who fulfilled the requirements to become a United States citizen.  We calculate the percentage of naturalized citizens by dividing the Census Bureau's number of foreign-born naturalized citizens by the total population in the state.

Non-citizen refers to anyone residing in the United States who is not a citizen. We calculate the percentage of non-citizens by dividing the Census Bureau's number of foreign-born non-citizens by the total population in the state.

State Data Source: U.S. Census Bureau: Table: S0501: SELECTED CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NATIVE AND FOREIGN-BORN POPULATIONS

Note: 2021 1-year estimates were incomplete for some states; in the case of missing data, figures from the 2021 5-yr estimates were used.