Ghana among top five African countries with immigrants in US
Ghana is part of the top five African countries with the highest number of immigrants in the US, a new report from Pew Research Center analysis of the US Census Bureau has said.
There are 155,000 Ghanaian immigrants in the US who were born in Ghana.
According to the report African immigrants are growing in numbers, almost doubling every decade since 1970.
It also said there were 2.1 million African immigrants living in the United States in 2015, up from 881,000 in 2000 and a substantial increase from 1970 when the US was home to only 80,000 foreign-born Africans. They accounted for 4.8 per cent of the US immigrant population in 2015, up from 0.8 per cent in 1970.
The growth is evident among recently arrived immigrants and when compared to other major groups who arrived in the US in the past five years, Africans had the fastest growth rate from 2000 to 2013, increasing by 41per cent during that period, the report further noted.
It additionally says the largest countries of origin for African immigrants are Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Ghana and Kenya. These five countries accounted for half of the foreign-born African population in the US in 2015.
The transatlantic slave trade, the report pointed out brought hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans to the US, beginning in the 16th Century, however, significant voluntary migration from Africa is a relatively new trend, it added.
By Pamela Ofori-Boateng
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