Immigrants from the Dominican Republic in the United States

Immigrants from the Dominican Republic make up the fourth largest Hispanic immigrant group in the U.S., their numbers having increased by 33 percent since 2010. This article from the Migration Policy Institute uses data from the U.S. Census, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other sources to give an overview of Dominican immigrants in the U.S. including their geographic distribution, income, education and immigration pathways. The report finds that Dominican immigrants actively utilize family ties to enter the U.S. (99 percent of Dominican immigrants arrive through family sponsorship compared to 69 percent of immigrants overall). They are also more likely than other immigrant groups to be lawful permanent residents and to naturalize. Dominican immigrants tend to settle in traditional destination areas, primarily in New York (45 percent), New Jersey (16 percent), Florida (12 percent) and Massachusetts (eight percent). The majority of Dominican immigrants are between the ages of 18 to 64 and they are overrepresented in the service, production, transportation and material moving occupations. While they have a significantly lower median household income and educational attainment than both the overall foreign-born and the U.S.-born populations, data shows that global remittances to the Dominican Republic have more than doubled in the past decade reaching nearly $8 billion in 2020. (Jaisang Sun for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)