The US continues to be a prime destination for African immigrants, according to data analyzed by the Pew Research Center. The number of African immigrants coming into the US has increased by more than 50 percent since the year 2000, a new report from the Center has revealed.
The organization says that, as of 2015, as many as 2.1 million immigrants who were born in Africa were residing in the US. This is a considerable increase from the figure of 880,000, recorded 47 years ago, in 1970. The figure then was just 80,000. The author of the study and Pew research associate, Monica Anderson, says that one of the reasons why the increase has been so large is that many of the African immigrants are refugees.
Anderson says that in 1980, just one percent of all refugees given admittance to the US came from Africa, but that share has risen to a massive 37 percent today. In an interview with Voice of America, Anderson admits that this driving factor does not tell the whole story.
Anderson adds that over the course of many years, certain areas in the US have developed large and established populations of African immigrants, such as Minnesota in the Midwest, where one-fifth of the state’s foreign-born population – around 25,000 people – are of Somali origin. Texas, California, Maryland, and New York are the top states in which African immigrants to the US are residing.