Jamaicans now largest number of U.S. black migrants

Black immigrants from Jamaica now account for the largest number of foreign-born blacks in the US today, according to a US  Census Bureau survey.The study estimates the Jamaican-American as 682,000 or 18 percent of foreign born blacks that comprise America’s black population.

Haitians, estimated at 586,000, are the second highest number of foreign-born blacks in the US, representing in total 15 percent of  the US’s black population. In descending order of U.S. blacks migrants from the Caribbean are those from Trinidad and Tobago with an estimated 192,00 people, Dominican Republic (161,000), Guyana (122,000), Mexico (70,000), Barbados (51,000), Cuba (41,000), Grenada (34,000), and Panama (32,000).

The calculations, however do not account for 2nd generation Caribbean-Americans born in the U.S. which would bring the total population at a higher rate. For Jamaica, various independence demographic surveys place the number closer to closer to 2 million, including approximately 400,000 in South and Central Florida and 1 million in the Tri-state region of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

A record 3.8 million black immigrants not live in the United States today, more than four times the number in 1980, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. Black immigrants now account for 8.7 percent of the nation’s black population, nearly triple their share in 1980. Rapid growth in the black immigrant population is expected to continue. The Census Bureau projects that by 2060, 16.5 percent of U.S. blacks will be immigrants.