Korean Immigrants to the US Live Disproportionately in Los Angeles

The Migration Policy Institute in Washington, DC has created a "go-to" website for migration information. Although they have closely followed the national debate over undocumented immigration, they have also featured immigrant groups in the US that are almost entirely represented by legal migrants. Using data from the 2008 American Community Survey, the 2000 Census, and immigration data from the Department of Homeland Security, they have recently summarized data for the Korean-born population in the United States. In 1970 there were fewer than 40,000 Korean-born persons living in the US, but that had increased to more than one million by 2008. One in five of them currently lives in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, with the New York City metro area being home to the second largest group (14 percent), so one in three lives in either LA or NYC. Koreans are, on average, better educated than other immigrant groups, and they have an above average rate of becoming naturalized US citizens.