Thursday, August 17 2006 11:11 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: Every eighth person in America today is foreign born with Asians making up the second largest group of immigrants with India, China and the Philippines supplying the greatest numbers.

Over 1.2 million immigrants came from Asia during 2000-2005,the second largest group after the 2.9 million people from Latin American countries - including 1.8 million from Mexico that accounted for more than half of all arrivals, according to new data released by the US Census Bureau.

Immigrants in the United States that numbered 36 million people in 2005, making up 12.4 percent of the population, are dispersing to areas beyond their traditional destinations, the figures suggest.

More than one in three residents living in Los Angeles and New York were not US citizens at birth, but the fastest growth in the foreign-born population recently has been in southeastern states.

Of the 5 million new arrivals in the last five years, 58 percent settled in the six states that traditionally attract the largest numbers of immigrants - California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. California alone attracted 21 percent.

But, according to Jeffrey Passel, a demographer with the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, those shares are down. In the 1980s and early 1990s, he said,"The big six immigrant states attracted about 80 percent of new arrivals, and California, 35 percent."

In 2000-2005, the states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Nebraska and New Hampshire experienced growth in their foreign-born populations at rates more than double the rate in the United States as a whole (which is 16 percent).

According to Rakesh Kochhar, associate director for research at Pew, economic growth and the jobs that come with it are magnets for immigrants. He said the flow of immigrants peaked in the late 1990s and then decreased.

"It may have been associated with recession or with 9/11," he said.

"But it was a temporary lull in 2003 and 2004. There has been a pickup again." He attributed the shift of immigrant settlement in the Southeast to the availability of jobs in manufacturing, food processing and construction," he said.

In a new study Kochhar found no consistent pattern in employment levels and foreign-born populations in each of the 50 states to assess immigrants' impact on employment of American-born workers.

The United States hosts the largest share of the world's immigrants - 20 percent. It accounted for 75 percent of the world's increase in immigrants from 1990 to 2005, gaining 15 million people in 15 years.

Germany and Spain followed, with gains of more than 4 million each.