Houston's foreign-born population is growing
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Nearly one-fifth of Texas' residents came from foreign countries — and that share is much higher in Greater Houston.
Why it matters: The Bayou City is known for its diverse cultures, foods and population.
- The latest numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, crunched by Axios, underline that point.
By the numbers: More than 676,000 Houstonians, or 29.3% of the city's 2.3 million residents, were foreign-born, according to the Census Bureau's 2023 American Communities Survey.
- That's slightly higher than the 28.3% of Houstonians in 2013 who were reported to be born outside the U.S.
- Harris County, including Houston, saw an overall increase of foreign-born residents from 1.1 million (25.3% of county's population then) in 2013 to 1.3 million (27.3%) in 2023.
Zoom in: Fort Bend County had the largest reported percentage of foreign-born residents in Greater Houston in 2023.
- The county's 284,000 foreign-born residents account for 31% of its population of 917,000. That's also up from 170,000 (26.1%) in 2013.
Zoom out: Nearly 5.5 million people born outside the U.S. called Texas home in 2023, the latest year for which data is available.
- That's 17.9% of the state's 30.5 million people.
- In 2013, 4.4 million Texans (16.5% of the population at the time) were born abroad.
The big picture: Texas' foreign-born population growth has mimicked what's happening nationally.
- In 2023, 14.3% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, up from 13.1% a decade prior.
The big picture: Immigration is a key issue in this year's presidential race, with former President Trump promising mass deportations of immigrants if reelected and Vice President Kamala Harris supporting a pathway to citizenship.
The latest: 1 in 3 Americans says that immigrants entering the country illegally today are "poisoning the blood of our country" — language echoing the rhetoric of white supremacists and Adolf Hitler, Axios' Russell Contreras writes.
- The results from the annual survey by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, in partnership with the Brookings Institution, suggest that in a nation of immigrants, many Americans have bought into historically racist rhetoric.