Mexican immigrants moving to new places

Mexican immigrants are no longer concentrated in only California, Chicago, and the Southwestern states. According to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C., last year only 38 percent of the nation's Mexican immigrants lived in California. That's down from 58 percent in 1990.

Jeffrey S. Passel, a demographer with the Pew Hispanic Center, said that nationally, most Mexican-born residents have long been concentrated in California and Texas.

''If you go back 15 or 20 years, there weren't very many Mexicans outside of core settlement areas of the Southwestern states and the Chicago area,'' he said.

In the early 1990s, he said, California's ailing economy and rising anti-immigrant sentiments pushed some Mexican immigrants into new places with abundant jobs such as North Carolina, Georgia and New York City.

Northeast Sees Mexican Immigration Rise
Associated Press - NEWBURGH, N.Y.
July 31, 2005