One-Third of Montgomery County Residents Were Born Outside the United States (PHOTOS)
In a news conference on Monday, Montgomery County Council President Nancy Floreen stated that one-third of the county’s residents were born outside the United States. Floreen cited a report compiled by the CountyStat office that uses U.S. Census data from 2013.
“We had a diversity briefing last week. Our CountyStat people have been looking at demographics across the county and we’ve discovered that fully one-third of Montgomery County residents had been born outside the U.S.,” said Floreen.
The report was presented before the county board on December 1st and is available online via CountyStat’s website. According to the report, 33% of Montgomery County’s residents were born in a foreign country. The majority of immigrants in Montgomery County are from Latin America and Asia while in 2010 the county became a majority minority community. The top five countries of origin are El Salvador, China, India, Ethiopia and Korea. Nearly one out of every 200 people born in El Salvador currently resides in Montgomery County.
The most commonly spoken foreign language is Spanish followed by Chinese, various African languages, French and Korean. Montgomery County is home to nearly 140,000 Spanish speakers, or 15% of the county’s population, 35,000 Chinese speakers (4%), 30,000 African language speakers (3%), 22,000 French speakers (2%) and 13,000 Korean speakers (1.5%). Montgomery County also has an overwhelming share of Maryland’s Armenian, Persian and Chinese speaking population in comparison to all other counties in the state.
PHOTO | Montgomery County
CountyStat’s report also indicated that 26,040 households (7%) do not have at least one member who can speak English “very well.” These households are concentrated around Wheaton, the Prince George’s border, and the corridor in between Rockville and Germantown.
You can find out more about the report on the CountyStat website.
Interesting stats on diversity! Thanks for the insights!