Mexicans, Indians, Filipinos Are Highest Numbers Of New Citizens
Filipinos constitute the third biggest number of new U.S. citizens in 2009 after Mexico and India, a report of the Office of Immigration Statistics of the United States Department of Homeland Security said.
In 2009, the five leading countries of birth of new U.S. citizens were Mexico (111,630 or 15 percent of total), India (52,889 or 7.1 percent), the Philippines (38, 934 or 5.2 percent), China (37,130 or 5 percent), and Vietnam (31,168 or 4.2 percent).
The largest number of naturalized persons lived in California (179,754), New York (88,733) and Florida (82,788) — states with the biggest number of immigrant population.
The Annual Flow Report for 2009 said that 53 percent of all naturalized persons were female, 54 percent were between 25 to 44 years old (with a median age of 40 years), and 67 percent were married.
Overall, the number of persons naturalizing in the US dropped almost 300,000 from 1,046,539 in 2008 to 743,715 in 2009. The report noted that the 2008 figure is an all-time record following a surge in applications in 2007 “in advance of a fee increase and efforts to encourage eligible immigrants to naturalize.”
The report said that from 2008 to 2009, the median years spent in legal permanent status decreased by two years.
The report noted that until the 1970s, most naturalized Americans were from Europe. Following the arrival of Indochinese refugees in the 1970s and the historically higher naturalization rate among Asian immigrants, “Asia has been the leading region of origin of new citizens in most years since 1976,” the report said.
