Migration has been a major source of population growth in Florida for many years. Florida’s internal migration patterns for three different time periods are compared: 2005-2007, 2008-2010 and 2011-2013. These three periods are interesting to analyze because they cover the years of high population growth before the Great Recession, the years of low growth during the Great Recession, and the recovery of population growth after the Great Recession.
Over the past 25 years, the growth of the foreign-born population in the United States has been phenomenal. Between 1970 and 1994, the foreign-born population more than doubled from 9.6 million to 22.6 million. During the same period, the U.S. population as a whole grew by less than 30 percent (see Table 1). In some states, the growth of the foreign-born population has been even more dramatic. The foreign-born population in California, Texas, Virginia, and Florida grew by more than 250 percent. This growth exacerbated the unequal distribution of the foreign-born population across the states. In 1970, the four states with the largest immigrant populations (California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois) accounted for 53 percent of all foreign-born residents. But by 1994, Florida and Texas had risen in the rankings to third and fourth place, while the total share of foreign-born in the top four states rose to 64 percent; the same four states accounted for only 28 percent of the native-born population.
In all states, new immigrants are contributing to the growth of the foreign-born population. For several states, however, the latest influx of immigrants is not coming from abroad. Instead, many “new” immigrants are coming from other parts of the United States, relocating after their initial arrival. While discussions about the impact of immigration and “new” immigrants often focus exclusively on immigration from abroad, secondary migration of foreign-born peoples in the United States may be another factor leading to the growth and increasing concentration of foreign-born populations in certain states.
Because immigration from abroad has been the focus of traditional foreign-born studies, very little information has previously been available on the numbers or characteristics of foreign-born individuals migrating to the United States. 1 This briefing paper addresses this lack of information by providing an estimate of the volume of foreign-born migration, the demographic and socioeconomic profile of the immigrants, and an analysis of destination choice.