________________________________________________________
            ! Metro population:           4,223,485 (1990 Census)    !
            !                             4,563,000 (1996 CPS)       !
            ! Foreign-born population:      491,763 (1990 Census)    !
            ! Percent foreign born:           11.9% (1990 Census)    !
            ! New legal immigrants:         232,056 (1991 to 1998)   !
            !________________________________________________________!

INS DATA ON NEW LEGAL IMMIGRANTS 1991-1998
The Washington DC metropolitan area (the District of Columbia, 5 surrounding Maryland counties, 11 Virginia counties, 6 independent Virginia cities and 2 West Virginia counties) accounts for more than seven times the immigrant settlement rate in the District of Columbia. The annual average number of immigrants settling in the area since 1990 has been about 29,000.

The legal immigrant settlement data during this period was augmented by adjustment of status of about 10,000 persons in FY-91 who had been in illegal status until the amnesty that was adopted in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). Just among the long-term resident amnesty applicants (excluding the amnestied agricultural workers), the number of applicants from the Washington, D.C. metro area numbered 19,804.

The data for FY'95, FY'97 and FY'98 were artificially low because the INS was not able to issue green cards to all the applicants for adjustment of status who were already in the United States. In those three years, new immigration could have registered as much as 30 percent higher, if the INS had issued more green cards. First listed below are the overall total legal immigrant admissions and adjustments for each of the eight years since the 1990 Census. That data is followed by a year-by-year breakdown showing the major country of origin data for the new immigrants.

ANNUAL TOTAL IMMIGRATION BY FISCAL YEAR: 1991-96
Listed below are the overall total legal immigrant admissions and adjustments for each of the six years since the 1990 Census. Also available is the year-by-year breakdown of the major nationalities of the new immigrants.

FISCAL YEAR   NUMBER OF ADMISSIONS   BY NATIONALITY
1991             36,370               FY-91
1992             27,718               FY-92
1993             27,427               FY-93
1994             25,021               FY-94
1995             25,717               FY-95
1996             34,327               FY-96
1997             31,444 
1998             24,032
Total           232,056

INS DATA ON FY'91-96 IMMIGRANT SETTLEMENT BY NATIONALITY
The following data are furnished for nationals of the countries with the largest number of immigrants admitted or adjusted to legal U.S. residence each year. The absence of data for a country simply means that the total number of admissions to the United States by nationals of that country were not enough to merit detailed reporting by metro area.

Bangladesh             1,168
Canada                 1,367
China *               11,713
Colombia               1,840
Cuba                     233
Dominican R.           2,068
Ecuador                  566
El Salvador           20,016
Guatemala              2,888
Guyana                 1,647
Haiti                  1,123
India                  9,493
Iran                   5,408
Jamaica                3,514
Korea                  6,571
Mexico                 4,692
Nicaragua **           1,000
Nigeria                1,834
Pakistan               5,363
Peru                   5,027
Philippines            7,760
Poland                   654
Soviet Union ***       4,490
United K.              2,856
Vietnam               13,529
Other                 59,760 
Total                176,511
* Includes Hong Kong and Taiwan when available.
** data available for only FY'91 and FY'92.
*** Includes Russia and Ukraine data.

1997 CURRENT POPULATION SURVEY (CPS) DATA
According to the 1997 CPS, Washington DC's metropolitan area population increased by over 380,000 (9.0%) since 1990. Of that increase, over 172,000 was due to net immigrant settlement (45% of the increase). This share of population increase does not take into concideration the share of population increase from children of immigrants born in this country -- who are counted with native-born births. Applying national-level data that show about 21 percent of the country's net increase from natural change results from immigrant births, the total amount of population change in the Washington metro area due to immigration is likely to be about 62 percent. The Washington DC metro area, like the District, has a net out-migration of residents that offsets some of the natural increase (births-deaths). The outflow of native residents to other areas is not just a flight from the District, as the metro area has a greater outflow than District alone.

OTHER
The illegal immigrant flow from Chirilagua, a small town in southeastern El Salvador, to Arlandria, VA (now also called Chirilagua by its 80 percent majority Hispanic population) was profiled in the Washington Post. This flow from Central America to the nation's capital region is a large part of the biggest wave of immigration in the area's history. From 1-in-22 residents being foreign born in 1970, the ratio jumped to 1-in-12 in 1980 and 1-in-6 today. The mass Chirilagua migration apparently began in the 1960's, but was fueled in the 1970's by the country's revolutionary insurgency and repression.

The Post article chronicals the migration of one family, starting with the father in the early 1970's to a job in construction. The mother followed a few years later. The oldest of four children followed in 1980 at age 16, and she joined her mother working as a housekeeper at a Sheraton Hotel. Within another year a grandmother and the other three children arrived. The family connection continued to swell to include aunts and uncles and cousins -- and eventually entire neighborhoods. It is estimated that more than one million Salvadorans migrated during this period.

In the decade between the 1980 and 1990 Censuses (which significantly undercount illegal aliens) the population in just Maryland, Virginia and California -- the three major settlement locations -- jumped nearly four-fold from 84.6 thousand to 316.5 thousand. [FAIR Note: But the illegal migrant flow did not stop when the fighting in El Salvador ended. And the Central Americans, who had been spared from deportation during the fighting by temporary protected status (TPS), did not, for the most part, return home when that status expired. By 1996 the Census Bureau estimated that the Salvadoran population in those three states has grown by another 53 percent, to 485,000.] (Source: Washington Post, December 6, 1999)

FAIR, 12/99.