Here Are Some Shocking Facts You May Not Know About The US’ Latino Population

A class of Hispanic students recites the Pledge of Allegiance during a September 11 memorial service at Birdwell Elementary School September 11th in Tyler, Texas. (Photo by Mario Villafuerte/Getty Images)

By Felicia J. Persaud

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Oct. 13, 2017: The Latino or Hispanic population in the US has already been seen as a fast growing group of foreign born immigrants, who to some followers of the Donald Trump immigration ideology, are “taking over America,” and leading to the darkening of ‘White America.’

Yet the Pew Research Center is telling a different story. Here are 10 things you may not know:

1: According to latest data from Pew, Hispanics are only the second-largest racial or ethnic group behind whites and their growth rate has slowed in the past 15 years.

2: Latinos are being outpaced by Asians with a three percent growth, compared to 2 percent for Latinos.

3: In 2000, according to researchers, 40 percent of Latinos were immigrants. Today, that percentage has dropped to just under 35 percent.

4: This decline in the foreign-born share extends across the largest Latino origin groups. The foreign-born share among Guatemalans (61.3 percent in 2015) fell by 17.2 percentage points during this time, the largest percentage-point decline of the six largest Hispanic origin groups.

5: Salvadorans’ foreign-born share (59 percent in 2015) also had a significant drop, declining some 17 percentage points while, the Mexican foreign born share (32.2 percent in 2015), had a smaller decline – 9.3 points.

6: The number of Mexicans and Hispanics of Mexican origin in the US is down – from a recent peak of 65.7 in 2008 to 63.3 percent or 36 million as of 2015.

7: The population of Hispanics of Puerto Ricans to the U.S. mainland over the past decade has helped drive up their number from 3.8 million in 2005 to 5.4 million in 2015 in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

8: U.S. Hispanics are the youngest of the nation’s largest racial and ethnic groups, with a median age of 28 in 2015, up from 25 in 2000.

9: A whopping 14 million Hispanics say they speak only English at home in 2015, up from 7 million in 2000. At the same time, a record 35 million Hispanics ages 5 and older say they are English-proficient, up from 19 million in 2000.

10: It is Georgia and not California where the Hispanic population has more than doubled since 2000. That is the fastest growth among the 10 states with the largest Hispanic populations.

The writer is CMO at Hard Beat Communications, Inc. which owns the brands: NewsAmericasNow, CaribPRWire and InvestCaribbeanNow.