Immigration and Mental Health: Diverse Findings in Asian, Black, and Latino Populations

Immigration has deeply transformed the racial and ethnic composition of the United States. Over the past 3 decades, the immigration of people from Mexico and South American and Latin American countries has resulted in Latinos becoming the largest ethnic minority population, totaling 12.5% of the US population. Although Asian Americans do not match the population size of Latinos, they have grown at the fastest rate of any major racial category and make up nearly 4% of the US population. Black immigrants have not received the same attention as Latino or Asian immigrants, but they contribute significantly to an increasingly diversified US Black population; Blacks from the Caribbean are the largest subgroup of immigrants, constituting slightly more than 4% of the national Black population. In some major cities, such as New York, Boston, and Miami, Black immigrants are more than one fourth of the entire Black population.1–5