One city in a nation of immigrants

For nearly 1 million metro Atlanta residents, living here is less about the distinction between OTP or ITP. That’s because they’re among the 15% of metro residents who were born in other countries but who now call the USA home.

As the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its independence, data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that residents representing more than 130 nationalities from around the world now live here.

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of the data found that the metro area has a greater percentage of foreign-born residents than nearly 90% of the metro areas in the country.

Foreign-born residents reside all across the metro area, and the Census Bureau counts people in small areas called tracts. These tracts are roughly neighborhood-sized in densely populated areas of the state.

Mexico is the largest contributor to the foreign-born population in more than 300 tracts throughout the metro region. Nearly 150,000 Atlanta-area residents were born in Mexico, the Census Bureau estimated.

In 2023, Census data analyzed by the Urban Institute found that more than one out of every five Georgians has at least one immigrant parent.

For them and their families, “immigration is not an issue,” said Gigi Pedraza, executive director of the Latino Community Fund Georgia. “It’s who we are.”

Residents born in the United States far outnumber foreign-born residents across the metro area, but in 25 tracts, people born outside the U.S. outnumber people born inside the U.S., the AJC found.

A patchwork quilt-like map of the metro area shows how immigrant communities have expanded into the city’s suburbs: Asian immigrants have made inroads in a crescent of communities around the northern fringe, with those born in South Central Asia, especially Indians, in southern Forsyth County, northwest Gwinnett and the most northern fringes of Fulton.

Indian-born residents are the largest contributor to the foreign-born population in nearly 200 tracts across the metro area, second only to Mexico.

Meanwhile, folks from East Asian backgrounds are the predominant foreign-born group along the northwest I-85 corridor in Gwinnett. Korean-born residents lead the foreign-born population in 47 tracts, nearly all in Gwinnett.

At the same time, there is a growing Caribbean immigrant community, most heavily made up of Jamaicans, along I-20 in the southeastern suburbs. Only a handful of other places in America now have as many people claiming Jamaican ancestry as Newton County.

And the area around Clarkston, sometimes unofficially called America’s most diverse small town, shows a smorgasbord of national backgrounds in its foreign-born population, including Somalis, Ethiopians, Haitians, Ugandans, Burmese, Laotians and Bangladeshis.