ORLANDO, Florida— The main source of new residents in Florida and Texas, the two US states with the highest numbers of new residents last year, were other countries.
Just over 45% of the nearly 634,000 Florida residents who said they had lived in another state or abroad in the previous year came from a foreign country, according to immigration data released Thursday by the Census Bureau.
Floridawith 23 million people, had more people saying they had lived somewhere else in the previous year than any other state, although Texas wasn’t far behind. Of the nearly 612,000 Texas residents who had lived elsewhere in the previous year, 43% were from another country. Texas has 30.5 million people.
Migration figures do not indicate which countries the new residents arrived from.
Priscila Coronado moved to Miami last year from Guatemala, looking for a better life.
“I came to have a better future,” Coronado commented recently in an interview with AP.
“My dream is to study, learn English and get a nursing degree… There is not much crime here and that is an achievement,” he added.
Among states in the country, New York was the leading producer of new Florida residents, and more newly minted Texans had lived in California in the previous year than in any other state.
But Florida and Texas not only gained residents, some also left. Georgia was the state that won the most ex-Florida residents last year, and California had the most ex-Texans.