Cool maps - ACS

The U S Census Bureau has a website called FactFinder where they have all sorts of info about Elgin. Some of it is rather startling. The 2000 Census has rather complete data and the ACS fills in the blanks since then.

The ACS is American Community Survey, a sampling of 3 million people a year. From that sample they make some educated guesses about the population.

So...the maps are from the year 2000 and I'll try to add some narrative about the ACS updates.

The first map is the foreign-born population:

The dark green shows areas of the city where the foreign-born population make up between 42% and 53% of the total population.

In the 2000 census there were 22,258 foreign-born inhabitants, making up 23.7% of Elgin's total population.
The ACS estimate (2005) put the foreign-born at 27,422 or 27.4% of the population. The US average of foreign-born is 12.5%.

Summary: The foreign-born are concentrated on the east side of town between the river and Liberty Street and Congdon and Rte 20.

We are adding approximately 1,000 foreign-born per year and they are growing faster than the general population. Elgin has over two times the national average of foreign-born population.

For those who want to do their own research here's the link to FactFinder:
http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en