How many in Clark County come from countries on Trump’s list?

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Many airports remained embroiled in protests today after President Donald Trump on Friday issued a temporary order to turn away travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries. That list includes: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Libya.

How many people in Clark County were born in those seven countries? The answer is close to 500 but there’s a couple of caveats. First, the data is from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey’s 5-year estimates and, as with any survey based on sample sizes, there’s what we call margin for error. And second, the ACS data doesn’t drill down far enough in this county to get numbers for some countries.

But here is what we know. According to the 2015 ACS, an estimated 423 from Iran, 11 from Iraq, 65 from Syria, 0 from Yemen and Somalia and 12 from Sudan. Libya is not on the list but the data does show 16 from other North Africa, including Libya, Tunisia and Algeria and possibly others (I did not see a list of those countries in Northern Africa but took an educated guess based on geography).

Now, let’s talk about that margin of error, which is kind of big for these estimates. For example, the margin of error on people here from Iran is +/- 193 of the total estimated 423, so there could be as little as 230 here from Iran or as high as 616. I’ll let you decide what to believe and at the same time, here’s the margin of error on the other 6 countries: Iraq (+/-17), Syria (+/-64), Yemen (+/-28), Somalia (+/-28) and Other Northern Africa (+/-17).

Here’s how that stacks up with 2010 ACS data: about 391 from Iran (+/-211), 37 from Iraq (+/-39), 8 from Syria (+/-12), 0 from Yemen (+/-123), 0 from Sudan (+/-123), 132 from Other Eastern Africa which would include Somalia (+/-89) and 27 from Other Northern Africa which would include Libya (+/-44).

If we assume the margin of error is nonexistent, it appears the Iranian population here is the largest of the seven banned nationalities and it has slighly increased, and the number of Iraqis in this county has nearly doubled.

How does that stack up against the foreign-born population here? ACS data from 2015 shows that about 44,711 people in this county are foreign-born, or about 10 percent of the total estimated population of 444,506. Of those, an estimated 21,735 or 48.6 percent are not U.S. citizens.

Interestingly, it appears in Clark County at least that more foreign-born residents are becoming naturalized citizens. ACS data in 2010 shows that about 10 percent of the population was foreign-born but about 23,130 foreign-born people in Clark County or about 55 percent were not U.S. citizens while about 18,830 or 45 percent were naturalized citizens.

Go back farther to 2000 and census data shows about an estimated 29,357 of the county’s 345,238 residents or 8.5 percent were foreign-born. Of those, about 10,146 or 34.6 percent were naturalized citizens while 19,211 or 65.4 percent were not citizens.

In 2015, the bulk of the foreign-born naturalized citizens came from Asia (10,340 or 45 percent) and Europe (8,016 or 34.8 percent). Of those who were not citizens, an estimated 9,066 or 41.7 percent came from Latin America, 6,136 or 28.2 percent from Europe and 4,510 or 20.7 percent from Asia.