D.C. area a hot spot for legal immigration last year

The D.C. area was among the most popular regions for legal immigrants in 2008, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The Washington region ranked fourth among metropolitan destinations for immigrants in fiscal 2008, and Virginia and Maryland were in the top 10 in state rankings, according to DHS’s annual flow report.

There were nearly 43,000 legal permanent residents in the D.C.-Arlington-Alexandria region in 2008 and about 1.1 million nationwide. Virginia ranked eighth among states with about 30,000 and Maryland ranked 10th with just over 27,000. The D.C. area’s legal immigrant population made up about 4 percent of the national total last year.

“We’ve been the destination of immigrants for decades, both legal and illegal,” said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. The center is a nonpartisan research organization that chronicles the Hispanic population’s effect on the nation.

California ranked first among states with about 240,000 legal permanent residents — 21.5 percent of the country’s total — and the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island region was first among metropolitan centers with 180,000, or 16.3 percent.

Overall, legal immigration increased 5 percent from 2007 to 2008.

The majority of new LPRs already lived in the United States when they were granted lawful permanent residence, and nearly 65 percent were granted permanent residence based on a family relationship with a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident of the United States, the report said. The leading countries of birth of new LPRs were Mexico, with 17 percent, China at 7 percent, and India, 6 percent.

The annual average LPR flow quadrupled from 250,000 during the 1950s to just over one million in the past decade. The spike in legal immigration around 1990 reflects the legalization of 2.7 million unauthorized immigrants under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, according to the report.

Conversely, overall immigration into the United States has slowed as jobs have dried up, according to a report earlier this year from the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that analyzes the migration of people worldwide.

In November 2008, the Current Population Survey counted about 37.7 million immigrants, the report said. The number was slightly up from 37.4 million in January 2008 and 37.6 million in November 2007, but the increases were not statistically significant, according to the report, titled “Immigrants and the Current Economic Crisis.”

Illegal immigrants generally come for specific jobs but could be deterred because of high unemployment rates, said Randy Capps, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
“The recession's been having an impact,” he said.