Nationally, the number rose by about 512,000 in 2007 compared with an annual average increase of nearly a million since the beginning of the decade. New Jersey and Illinois fell from the list of states with the biggest gain in immigrants, displaced by Arizona and Pennsylvania.

“New York City may be drawing in fewer fresh-off-the-boat  or, more accurately, fresh-off-the-airplane  Hispanic arrivals,” said Nancy Foner, a sociology professor at Hunter College. “At the same time, there’s been movement out of New York City among longer-term Latino immigrant residents to suburbs, exurbs and even further afield in search of cheaper housing and better schools and in response to job opportunities elsewhere in the country.

“Even when economic times are rough in New York, they are even more difficult in the Caribbean and Latin America, so people there still want to come to the U.S.,” she said. “And many continue to head for New York, where they have friends and family. And jobs, although perhaps less plentiful and harder to get, are still available.”

The Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey of social, economic and housing statistics also found that about half the residents of metropolitan Los Angeles and Miami over age 5 (and about one in five Americans in that age group nationally) do not speak English at home and that about 31 percent of immigrants were born in Mexico.

Median home values rose in price by 2 percent from 2006 to 2007, the lowest increase in several years, the survey said. Homeowners with mortgages in California and New Jersey recorded the highest median monthly housing costs ($2,314 and $2,278, respectively).

The share of owners and renters paying more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs generally dipped in New York City and rose in the suburbs.

Even with gas prices more than doubling from 2000 to 2007, the proportion of commuters driving to work alone in 2007  76 percent  remained the same as when the decade began.