Hawai'i has the nation's sixth-highest percentage of foreign-born residents, the U.S. Census Bureau reported yesterday.

Seventeen percent of the state's 1.2 million residents were born outside the country, according to estimates from a 2003 survey.

Of Hawai'i's 208,185 foreign-born residents, 57 percent are naturalized U.S. citizens.

The census report also said that 77.6 percent of the state's foreign-born residents are from Asia, 6 percent are from Europe, 4.2 percent from Latin America and 12.1 percent from elsewhere.

More than 27,700, or roughly 13 percent of Hawai'i's foreign-born population, entered the country between 2000 and 2003, according to the estimates. Thirty percent arrived during the 1990s, 22 percent during the 1980s, 16 percent during the 1970s and 19 percent before 1970.

California had the highest percentage of foreign-born population, followed by New York, New Jersey, Florida and Nevada.

Nationally, 12 percent of the population was born outside the country.