Immigration shift shows India, China outpacing Mexico

Siddharth Jaganath wanted to return to India after earning his master's degree at Texas' Southern Methodist University. Instead, he built a new life in the US over a decade, becoming a manager at a communications technology company and starting a family in the Dallas suburb of Plano.
"You start growing your roots and eventually end up staying here," the 37-year-old said.
His path is an increasingly common one: Immigrants from China and India, many with student or work visas, have overtaken Mexicans as the largest groups coming into the US, according to US Census Bureau research released in May.
The shift has been building for more than a decade and experts say it's bringing more highly skilled immigrants here. And some Republican presidential candidates have proposed a heavier focus on employment-based migration, which could accelerate traditionally slow changes to the country's ever-evolving face of immigration.

Mexicans still dominate the overall composition of immigrants in the US, accounting for more than a quarter of the foreign-born people. But of the 1.2 million newly arrived immigrants here legally and illegally counted in the 2013 census, China led with 147,000, followed by India with 129,000 and Mexico with 125,000.
It's a sharp contrast to the 2000 census, which counted 402,000 from Mexico and no more than 84,000 each from India and China. Experts say part of the reason for the decrease in Mexican immigrants is a dramatic plunge in illegal immigration.