AUSTIN – The number of Texans born in another country is at an all-time high, but increasingly the folks who move here cross an ocean to do it.

A new study from the Office of the State Demographer showed migration to Texas from Latin America declined almost 25 percent between 2005 and 2013, while immigration by those born in Asia doubled.

Many new immigrants move to Texas directly, though a significant percentage arrive after first living in another state, the study found.

Anu Jayanth, an Indian-born novelist who came to Texas via Canada and Chicago, is the part of the state’s changing face.

“Here it’s like being in India,” where the climate is warm, said Jayanth, 58, who also lived in Houston before settling down in a neighborhood west of the University of Texas campus in Austin. “Everybody walks, everybody talks.” 

Most foreign-born immigrants who come to Texas from other states arrive from  California, Florida, Illinois, Oklahoma and Louisiana. California, for example, contributed 20 percent of foreign-born migrants to Texas in 2013.

Andy H. Nguyen said he understands the appeal of Texas for Californians who were born in Asian countries.

“Even though California has a much better climate,” he said, “business opportunities, job opportunities and the cost of living” bring Asians to Texas.

“I have friends from California who come here and were amazed at the size of the house we live in,” he said.

It’s about 3,600 square feet — not at all outsized by North Texas standards. 

“In California it would cost $1 million or more,” he said. 

The average home in southwest Arlington, where Nguyen lives, is currently selling for $269,251, according to realtor.com.

Nguyen arrived in Texas in 1981, at age 14, after his family fled South Vietnam in the wake of the war. Now 49, he is a second-term Tarrant County commissioner who lives in Arlington. 

Nguyen said he knows Vietnamese immigrants to California who’ve who sold their houses there, paid cash for a new one in Texas, had money to buy a business, and still have a cash reserve. 

Newcomers congregate in the cities – Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth.

That led demographers to conclude that the state’s cities will eventually become the sorts of diverse places that New York, Los Angeles and Miami have long been. 

At the time of the last U.S. Census, in 2010, about 16 percent of Texans were born abroad, according to the demographers’ report, up from 2.8 percent in 1970.

The current numbers are a significant change even from 1850, when Texas was the frontier and about 8 percent of its residents were born in Mexico, Germany, Czechoslovakia or another foreign country. 

Between 2010 and 2013, Texas added 227,240 foreign-born persons.

One reason for the migration here is thriving industry, said Jayanth, whose 30-year-old, Montreal-born son is a software engineer in Austin.

Jayanth said the Indian community in Austin – unlike those in other places, including other parts of Texas – is “well integrated.”

“That’s why I fell in love with Austin,” she said. “I like the warm weather and the people who live in warm weather.”

Nguyen doesn’t mind the warm weather, either – as long as the air conditioning lasts.

“I’m extremely happy in Texas,” said Nguyen, a self-described common-sense conservative Republican.

“Being a Texan, you don’t have to be white. It’s more about values,” he said. “We can assimilate. I wear cowboy boots.”

John Austin covers the Texas Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at jaustin@cnhi.com.