News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Mar. 6, 2020: Three US states have the most eligible Caribbean immigrant voters, a new study from the Pew Center says.
New York stands out for the racial and ethnic diversity of its immigrant eligible voters. Immigrants from the Dominican Republic are the largest single group there, with 264,000 eligible voters. The second largest was from Jamaica with 143,000 eligible voters.
In Florida, Cuban immigrants are the largest group in Florida’s foreign-born electorate, with 606,000 voters. Haitian immigrants are the state’s third largest foreign-born voting bloc, with 187,000.
Meanwhile, the second highest top birth country for immigrant eligible voters in New Jersey is the Dominican Republic with 103,000.
Black immigrant eligible voters make up the smallest share of the immigrant electorate included in the analysis at 2.3 million, though this has grown from 7% in 2000 to 10% in 2018, according to Pew.
Nationally, more than 23 million U.S. immigrants will be eligible to vote in the 2020 presidential election, making up roughly 10% of the nation’s overall electorate – both record highs, according to Pew Research Center estimates based on Census Bureau data.
The data also found that a rising number and share of immigrants living in the U.S. have naturalized in recent years. Between 2009 and 2019, 7.2 million immigrants naturalized and became citizens, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In fiscal year 2018 alone, more than 756,000 immigrants naturalized.
