character
Foreign-born residents
Why this matters
Foreign-born residents are people who were born in another country and now live here. The group includes naturalized U.S. citizens, green-card holders, students, workers, and others. It is a measure of where people were born, not their current legal status.
Knowing how many residents are foreign-born helps a community plan well. Newcomers may need help learning English, getting professional licenses recognized, or finding their way around local services. Schools, clinics, and libraries can tailor programs when they understand who lives nearby.
Immigrant residents also strengthen a region. They start businesses, fill jobs, and add to the cultural life of a place. The Charlotte region is one of the fastest-growing immigrant gateways in the South, with established communities along corridors like Central Avenue and South Boulevard. Knowing where foreign-born residents live helps schools, courts, and election offices provide language access and helps newcomers connect to services.
About the Charlotte region
This explorer covers the 14-county, two-state Charlotte region (11 North Carolina and 3 South Carolina counties). Many of these indicators connect to a defining regional story: a landmark Harvard study ranked Charlotte last, 50th of the 50 largest U.S. metros for economic mobility (a child raised in the poorest fifth had about a 4.4% chance of reaching the top fifth), a finding that launched the region's Leading on Opportunity agenda. Updated 2024 data show Charlotte has since climbed to 38th.
Opportunity here is also unevenly mapped. An affluent “wedge” fanning southeast from uptown holds a large majority of the city's wealth on under a quarter of its land, while a ”crescent” to the north, west, and east carries higher poverty, a legacy of redlining, exclusionary zoning, and highway routing that recurs across the race, income, health, tree-canopy, and school maps in this tool. No single indicator is good or bad on its own; together they describe how the region sorted opportunity.
Companion resources: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer · UNC Charlotte Urban Institute · Opportunity Atlas · Methods & sources
Learn more
- U.S. Census Bureau — About the Foreign-Born Population census.gov
Definitions and overview of who is counted as foreign-born and how the data are collected.
- Pew Research Center — Key findings about U.S. immigrants pewresearch.org
Plain-language roundup of national data on the size, origins, and traits of immigrants.
About the data
Calculated from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (2014–2024), at the Census-tract level, with margins of error. ACS 5-year vintages overlap year to year, so the series is a rolling estimate; compare only non-overlapping periods.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.