Report: One in Four Young Children Have Immigrant Parents

Of the 23 million children under the age of six in the U.S., one in four have immigrant parents according to a new Migration Policy Institute report.

The children of immigrants also also account for the net growth in that under five age group since 1990, the report indicated, with the young children of immigrants population doubling in that time from 2.9 million to 5.8 million by 2011-2013.

“Nearly all young children from immigrant families are born in the United States (96 percent) and are therefore U.S. citizens with rights to access full social, health, and other benefits. The rest (4 percent) are immigrants themselves,” the report notes.

According to the MPI’s report — which primarily aimed to look at the early childhood education and care (ECEC) needs for these children and immigrant ECEC workforce — the children of immigrants “not surprisingly” are mostly concentrated in high immigrant states.

“California is home to one-quarter (close to 1.4 million) of the nation’s young children of immigrants… Four other states—Texas (747,000), New York (480,000), Florida (390,000), and Illinois (262,000)—account for another one-third of young children from immigrant families,” the report reads.

The report comes following a recent Center for Immigration Studies analysis of government data, which revealed that the Immigrant population in the US. will hit its highest percentage ever by 2023.

In eight years, CIS reported one in seven U.S. residents or 51 million people will be foreign-born.