Document Type

Research Report

Publication Date

2-22-2011

Abstract

This report provides a descriptive snapshot of selected demographic, economic, educational, and social indicators pertaining to foreign-born Latinos in Massachusetts. This report was prepared for the 2010 Statewide Latino Public Policy Conference organized by UMass Boston’s Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy. It is part of a larger series that covers Latinos in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and in fourteen of its largest cities with the greatest concentrations of Latinos.

Even though Massachusetts has a greater percentage of foreign-born residents (14.4%) than the United States as a whole (12.5%), a lower parentage (41.0%) of Latinos in Massachusetts are foreign-born than in the United States as a whole (43.0%). This is partly due to the fact that Puerto Ricans, who number around 225,000 in the state, are US citizens by birth. They comprise over a third of all Latinos (35.7%) in the state, and a majority (60.4%) of the state’s US-born Latino population.

Placing this present analysis in a historical perspective reminds us that in 2000, Massachusetts had the lowest concentration of foreign-born residents at any time since 1850 (Figure 2). The foreign-born population increased slightly from 2000 to 2008 (12.2% to 14.4%), but it is still small compared to earlier times in our history.

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