In April, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its Annual Immigrant Flow Report. The report details statistics on the Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) visas (better known as ‘green cards’) issued in 2009.
According to the report, 1,130,818 LPR visas were issued in 2009, an increase of 2.1% over the previous year. 60% of those represented foreign nationals already living and working in the U.S. applying for a change in status and the remaining 40% were requests made from persons living outside the U.S. coming as new arrivals.
More than 66% of the visa recipients were family sponsored, 15.7% were seeking refuge or asylum and 12.7% were employment sponsored.
Legal Permanent Residents came from all over the globe but the largest concentrations continue to be from Mexico (14.6 %), China (5.7%), the Philippines (5.3%) and India (5.1%). Once in the county, more than 20% of LPR’s reside in California. Other states seeing a large influx of new residents include New York (13.3%), Florida (11.2%) and Texas(8.4%).