Oregon’s immigration patterns stay the same as US changes

The demographics of the most recent immigrant arrivals in the United States are very different from what they were around ten years ago. Back in 2004, the great majority of US states experienced mostly immigrants from Mexico, yet by 2014, 37 states now experienced more immigrants from other places than from that country, new Pew Charitable Trust data suggests.

However, the immigration patterns in the state of Oregon curiously remain the same, with Mexicans still making up the majority of immigrants there, and the same is true of large parts of the West and the Southwest. In 2014, approximately 17,486 immigrants moved to Oregon largely from Vietnam and Mexico, with Washington taking 60,287 immigrants and California taking 364,582, primarily Mexicans.

More new immigrants are coming from India and China to the east of the Mississippi, although there is still double the number of immigrants from Mexico than there are from those two countries.  Nonetheless that could change, with 2014 seeing just 240,000 new Mexican immigrants coming to live in the United States compared to 428,000 Indian and Chinese nationals, according to estimates from the US Census Bureau.

Officials from Pew Charitable Trust say that a number of the changes, including Mexican immigration having apparently peaked, are linked to the economy, with improved job prospects in their home country coupled with stricter immigration laws and the recession having reduced the flow considerably, while educated Indian and Chinese immigrants are now finding it easier to find work in the United States.