Report: 1 in 5 Americans will be foreign-born by 2050

WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — By the year 2050, nearly one in five Americans will be foreign-born, 29 percent of the population will be Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites will become a minority, accounting for only 47 percent of the population, according to a report released Monday.

Authors of the study by the nonpartisan, Washington-based Pew Research Center cautioned that their findings were merely projections based on current trends that are subject to change.

Nonetheless, the report offers an intriguing picture of the possible long-term effects of the surge in immigration unleashed in 1965, when Congress abolished a restrictive quota system that had all but ended immigration from non-European countries since the 1920s.

Immigrants and their U.S.-born children and grandchildren already have accounted for most of the nation’s population increase over the last several decades — as the number of births to U.S.-born women declined, then leveled off.