"The percent of the nation that was foreign born in 2005 was 12.4 percent. According to the ACS, more than 1-in-3 residents living in Los Angeles (40.3 percent), San Jose (37.9) and New York (36.6) were not U.S. citizens at birth. Conversely, Detroit (6.3 percent) and Indianapolis (6.7) were large cities where the percent of foreign born was half that of the national average."

"The number of immigrants living in American households rose 16 percent over the last five years, fueled largely by recent arrivals from Mexico, according to fresh data released by the Census Bureau.

And increasingly, immigrants are bypassing the traditional gateway states like California and New York and settling directly in parts of the country that until recently saw little immigrant activity - regions like the Upper Midwest, New England and the Rocky Mountain States.

'...Essentially, it's a continuation of the Mexicanization of U.S. immigration,' said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies. 'You would expect Mexicans to be increasing their share in places like Georgia and North Carolina, which already saw some increases, but they've also increased their share of the population, and quite dramatically, in states like Michigan, Delaware and Montana.'

More of America's immigrants, legal or not, come from Mexico than any other country, an estimated 11 million in 2005, compared with nearly 1.8 million Chinese and 1.4 million Indians."

Because the peoples of Eastern Asia have been influenced by centuries of Confucian culture, their attachment to family is widely recognized and understood.  Surprisingly, though, young Americans - even in the 21st century - are just as likely as their East Asian counterparts to look to their families as their primary source of life satisfaction.

The evidence that young Americans resemble their Asian peers in viewing the family as their prime source of life meaning appears in a study recently published in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology by a team of researchers from the University of Rhode Island and the University of South Carolina.  When comparing survey data collected from 488 Korean students ages 12 to 17 with survey data collected from 571 American students of comparable ages, the researchers limn a clear pattern of convergence in family attitudes.  "The family domain," the researchers remark, "was the strongest contributor to global L[ife]S[atisfaction] for both U.S. and Korean adolescents."

The authors of the new study interpret their results as a clear indication that "regardless of culture, positive family expectations are essential to adolescent well-being."  In other words, "Across cultures, the importance of family in one's life seems to be universal."