Percent of Foreign-Born Citizens

According to the 2000 Census (9) and the “State of Maine 2004-2005 HIV/AIDS Epidemiological Profile,” foreign-born individuals comprise approximately 2.9% of Maine’s overall population, compared to the national estimate of 11.1% of the total US population (7).  In recent years, the media in Maine has focused a considerable amount of attention on a rapid influx of Somali immigrants to the city of Lewiston.  On the whole, Maine is only home to a total of 37,000 immigrants, but over an 18-month period in 2001-2002, 1,000 Somalis moved to Lewiston, completely overwhelming the small city’s ability to provide social services to its residents.  Due to the media’s obsession with this Lewiston immigration story, I thought it would be interesting to run a correlation between percentages of foreign-born citizens and AIDS rates in select Maine towns and cities. 

Before running this particular analysis, I was unsure whether percentages of foreign-born individuals would correlate with AIDS Rates, but I was surprised to find that the results were significant whether or not Ogunquit was excluded (see the table below and the foreign-born map).  Specifically, r = .68 when Ogunquit was included and r = .71 when Ogunquit was excluded.  The former value was significant at the α = .05 level (see correlation table 1), while the latter was significant at the α = .01 level (see correlation table 2).  However, the scatter plot of the data (see the scatter plot below) indicated that Ogunquit was not the only outlier in this particular data set; rather, Portland was also clearly set apart from the rest of the data points.  Portland is the largest city in Maine, so it makes sense that it would have a far greater percentage of foreign-born residents than other cities and towns (Lewiston, surprisingly, was not any different than the rest of the state).  Indeed, when Portland was excluded from the analysis, the r-value dropped to .04 (see correlation table 2), suggesting that, although immigration may affect AIDS rates in Maine’s most urban locale, it has little to no effect on the HIV/AIDS epidemic outside of this particular area.