Americans born in Asia are the highest earners in the foreign-born population in this country, according to 2004 data just released by the Census Department. The data does not give a breakdown by nation of origin but does give some figures on world regions of origin.

Predictably, most (91.5 percent) of those who immigrated from Asia before 1970, have become naturalized citizens.

Their proportion goes down as years progress –– of those who came between 1970-79, 89 percent are naturalized, while 68.9 percent of those who came between 1980-89 became citizens, and barely 36.3 percent of those who came between 1990-99 have gotten citizenship.

The nation’s foreign-born population numbered 34.2 million in 2004, accounting for 12 percent of the total U.S. population, according to U.S. Census Bureau’s report entitled ‘Foreign-Born Population of the United States Current Population Survey –– March 2004.’ The number of foreign-born is 2.3 percent higher than it was in 2003.

Within the foreign-born population, the majority, 53 percent, were born in Latin America, 25 percent in Asia, 14 percent in Europe and the remaining 8 percent in other regions of the world, such as Africa and Oceania (Australia, New Zealand and all of the island nations in the Pacific).

Second-generation Americans, natives with one or both parents born in a foreign country, numbered 30.4 million, or 11 percent of the total U.S. population. However, no region-of-origin data for this second-generation group has been made available.

Asian-borns also have the highest percentage of people with bachelor’s degrees (30 percent) and advanced degrees (19.7 percent) compared to the 10.2 percent with bachelor’s and 17.1 percent with advanced degrees among all foreign-born, and higher than those of European origin (20.4 percent bachelor’s and 15.9 percent advanced).

Interestingly, these higher figures carry into not just the foreign-born Asian men, but also women, where 30.7 percent of Asian-born women had bachelor’s degrees where 19.9 percent of European-born women did.

A similar difference exists in advanced degrees.

In terms of incomes earned, again Asian-borns had the highest median incomes among foreign-borns at $62,551, compared to $42,677 for the total foreign-born, and $55,714 for European-born and $33,962 among Latin American-borns.

Asian-borns living here had a higher proportion of those working in management, professionals or related occupations, compared to 26.3 percent among total foreign-born, and 41.6 percent among European-born.

But all is not well with any of the foreign-born groups so far as poverty levels are concerned.

Some 12 percent of Asian-borns in the U.S. live at or below the poverty level, compared to 9.9 percent of those born in Europe.

Data in the report comes from the Current Population Survey, and the Census Bureau warns that “Statistics from sample surveys are subject to sampling and non-sampling error.”