From its very beginnings, the history of Texas was a story of immigration. The first white Americans migrated to the area as part of a plan of the Mexican government to settle the sparsely populated areas north of the Sierra Madres. The graphs below depict estimates of the immigrant population in Texas and the United States since 1850. The foreign born population of Texas was below that of the country as a whole for most of this period, until a steady expansion of the immigrant population began in the 1970s. In 2025, an estimated 20.2% of those living in Texas were born outside of the United States. This large foreign born population is one of the many factors that contributes to Texas’ high level of ethnic and racial diversity.
