Where Do Most Non-Citizens Live In Sarasota County?

How American is your neighborhood?

It depends on how you qualify the definition of American, and for a Census data analysis, Sarasota Patch created the above map using Census data culled from the U.S. Census Bureau's American FactFinder database to see what the citizenship status is in each Census Tract in Sarasota County.

The largest concentration of non-citizens is near downtown and north central Sarasota as four Census tracts rank in the top five in Sarasota County with the highest non-citizen population. That's 3,899 non-citizens combined in that area.

Those areas are:

•North Central Sarasota from 17th Street to Tuttle Avenue to North Beneva Road and carving south toward Fruitville Road — 1,124 non-citizens (Census Tract 4.07)

•Desoto Lakes area bounded by University Parkway and North Lockwood Ridge Road — 1,067 non-citizens (Census Tract 12.02)

•Downtown Sarasota from 10th Street south to Wood Street, west to Orange Avenue, east to the railroad line — 919 non-citizens (Census Tract 1.02)

• Tuttle Elementary/Ed Smith Stadium area from 12th Street south to Paver Park — 789 non-citizens (Census Tract 4.01)

You can view these results in the map above with the darker shades showing more non-citizen population.

The only areas without non-citizens are on Siesta Key near Little Sarasota Bay on the southeast side and a small chunk of Englewood in Census Tract 26.05.

The Census tract with the most non-citizens in the whole county is in North Port — the largest city in Sarasota County. There, in Census Tract 27.12, 1,472 non citizens live there. However, it is also the largest Census Tract in the county having 29,470 residents there, making for a dispursed population.

The status and rights of a non-citizen can be murky — especially for legal non-citizens. For instance, they are counted as part of the total population, including if they are incarcerated, which helps entitle the local jurisdiction for more Congressional funding, they must pay taxes, but they can't vote in elections, and is actually against Florida law to register to vote as a non-citizen. Certain communities around the country allow non-citizens to vote in municipal or village elections.

The Census groups citizens into:

• U.S. Born

• Born in Puerto Rico or U.S. Island/Territory

• Born abroad of U.S. Parents

• Naturalized Citizen

• Non-citizen

It's important to note that though someone reported themselves as a non-citizen, it does not mean that the person is an illegal immigrant. Non-citizens can include those in Sarasota on a work visa and are liable to pay taxes, as RedrawingTheLines, a site funded by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, spells out:

Most legal permanent residents are eligible for naturalization after a minimum of five years of residence or three years if they are married to a U.S. citizen. Immigrants who are allowed to live in the United States but are not given permanent residence include individuals authorized to work or temporary visitors. All people working in the United States, regardless of immigration status, are obligated to pay taxes.

When it comes to purging non-citizens from the voter rolls, it already happened in Sarasota during Februray before the state controversy came to pass, and the effect was miniscule, The Herald-Tribune reported:

"They had all checked a box on a form excusing them from jury duty that indicated they were not U.S. citizens.

All but one — later found not to be a citizen, though he had never actually voted — had checked the box in error. Many were not added back to the voting rolls until months later.

That 11 of them ultimately had their citizenship confirmed underscores the difficulty for elections supervisors seeking to identify fraudulent voters. Various databases can contain out-of-date or inaccurate citizenship information."

Governments at all levels in the U.S. cannot use Census reports to identify people for crimes and issues, so they instead rely on a variety of other froms.

Here are some other facts derived from the map:

• The same Tuttle/Ed Smith area also has the highest Puerto Rican-born and U.S. Island Territory-born population in Sarasota area with 137. The North Port tract again ranks the highest at 561.

• The Lake Sarasota neighborhood is No. 1 in Sarasota County for having the most citizens born abroad to U.S. parents at 185.

• Two tracts in North Port have the most naturalized U.S. citizens in the county with a combined 2,068 naturalized citizens. In Sarasota, it goes to the Fruitville/The Enclave area east of Interstate 75 and north of Bee Ridge Road with 699 naturalized citizens.

• Nokomis and Laurel in Census Tract 22.03 is the only place in Sarasota County without a naturalized U.S. citizen.