Nevada ranked third in the nation in the growth of its foreign-born population during the 1990s, according to census figures released today.
Nevada was one of three states where the number of residents born outside the U.S. rose more than 200 percent in the last decade, behind North Carolina and Georgia, respectively. The numbers include legal and illegal immigrants.
"This is no surprise," said Peter Ashman, Las Vegas attorney and director of the Nevada chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "Our economy is based on the service industry and native-born people don't want to work in this industry, so it makes sense that we've attracted so many immigrants.
"Now the challenge for us in Nevada will be to provide services for these people, so that immigrant families become part of the American family," he said.
The same challenge is being faced by many states, as the latest data show the number of those born abroad nationwide has tripled since 1970. It reached 31 million people nationwide in 2000, the highest number recorded in U.S. history.
Although the number of foreign-born residents is at an all-time high, the percentage remains below levels recorded in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Census figures show that nearly 15 percent of the U.S. population in 1890 and 1910 was born outside the United States.
The foreign born represented 11 percent of the U.S. population in 2000.
In Nevada foreign-born residents numbered 316,593, or 15.8 percent of the population in 2000.
The latest data show that people from Latin America remain a majority of foreign-born residents, accounting for 52 percent of all those born outside the United States. They made up 61 percent of Nevada's non-native population.
Nearly half of those born abroad entered the United States during the 1990s, which fueled 40 percent of the nation's overall population growth between 1990 and 2000.
Silas Shawver, director of the Immigrant Workers Citizenship Project -- a Las Vegas nonprofit that helps immigrants become citizens -- said that Nevada's rise in foreign-born residents doesn't mean that the state is seeing a surge in recent immigrants.
"Many of the foreign-born people here -- particularly the Hispanics -- are not coming from outside the country, but from other states like California and New York, in search of employment.
"This means we have to be careful in stereotyping the entire population, or assuming we know what their needs are -- many of them speak English as well as native-born Americans, for example."
Gannett News Service contributed to this story.
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