By Manuel McDonnell-Smith
Add another score for diversity2.9 percent to be exact. Asians were the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States in 2012, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual population estimates. The U.S. Asian population grew by 530,000, or 2.9 percent, to 18.9 million. More than 60 percent of this growth came from international migration.
The rapid growth of the Asian population was closely followed by that of the Hispanic population, which is now estimated at just over 53 million. That figure is 1.1 million people, or 2.2 percent, more than in 2011. Natural births were behind 76 percent of the growth in this population, contributing to Hispanics’ remaining the nations’ second-largest ethnic group (behind non-Hispanic whites), at about 17 percent of the entire U.S. population.
