His own family first established itself in New Mexico before there was a United States, yet Michael Clara often finds himself helping a growing number of Mexican immigrant youths connect with their families' culture.

"The irony of it is I find myself trying to teach the children of the immigrants about their own history," said Clara, who leads a Hispanic Boy Scout troop. "Because of the stigma, they tend to want to relinquish themselves of their heritage."

Clara, like a majority of those who report Mexican ancestry, was born in the United States. However, in Utah, those who identify themselves as Mexican are more likely to be immigrants than other ancestry groups, and most of the state's Mexican immigrants are relatively new arrivals, according to a new census report.

An estimated 84,562 Utahns who reported Mexican ancestry in 2005 were foreign-born, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2005 American Community Survey.

That's roughly 44 percent of the state's total foreign-born population, and also about 44 percent of the 192,270 people reporting Mexican ancestry. About 76 percent of those immigrants have arrived since 1990.

The census report, being released today, includes detailed estimates for ancestry, race, Hispanic origin and age.

Compared to other ancestry groups, those who said they were Mexican tended to be younger and less likely to speak English at home.

While 86 percent of Utahns spoke only English at home, 72 percent of those with Mexican ancestry spoke a language other than English at home, and 43 percent spoke English less than "very well." The median age for the group was 24.2, compared to 28.5 for the state.

Utah's Mexican immigrant population was also more recently arrived than the nation's. Nationally, 60 percent of Mexican immigrants arrived in 1990 or later, compared to 54 percent of the total immigrant population.

By far the largest ancestry reported was English, reported by 699,156 Utahns. Of those, only 4,165, or fewer than 1 percent, were foreign-born.

The second largest group, Germans, comprised about 13 percent of the state's population, and about 4 percent of the state's foreign-born population.

"Mexico has been the major source of not only Utah's in-migration but of the nation's current migration wave," said Robert Spendlove, manager of demographic and economic analysis for the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget.

While the data suggested that a huge proportion of Italian immigrants were also recent arrivals, Spendlove pointed to the small sample of only about 3,040 total foreign-born to suggest that estimate may be an anomaly.