Pew study examines changes in US immigrant population

(CN) — The Pew Research Center released new data Monday that examines the population of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. and how immigration patterns have changed over time, finding the first increase in that population since 2019.

With the 2024 presidential election approaching, discussions of immigration have loomed with former President Donald Trump promising to enact “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country," and President Joe Biden issuing executive action to restrict asylum-seekers last month.

According to new data from Pew Research Center, the unauthorized immigrant population in the United States grew to 11.0 million in 2022 from 10.5 million in 2021. The estimate is based on the the most recent data up until mid-2022 from the American Community Survey.

This increase marks the first sustained growth since the period from 2005 to 2007 and comes after a long-term downward trend seen from 2007 to 2019. However, the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2022 was still below the peak of 12.2 million in 2007.

New alternative data sources have revealed the increase as they've emerged with record high levels of migrant encounters at U.S. borders, as well as the number of asylum applicants waiting on decisions throughout 2022 to 2023.

The data also does not consider the roughly 500,000 new immigrants paroled into the country through December 2023 via two federal immigration programs — the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan program and Uniting for Ukraine. Though groups like these have traditionally been considered part of the unauthorized immigrant population, most arrived too late to be counted in the current 2022 estimates.

The U.S. foreign-born population reached a record 46.1 million in 2022, with immigrants accounting today for 13.8% of the U.S. population. That share was slightly higher than in the previous five years, but still below the record high 14.8% in 1890.

Most immigrants, 77%, that year were in the country legally. And 49% of all immigrants in the country were naturalized U.S. citizens due to a steady increase in the lawful immigrant population, while unauthorized immigrants represented 3.3% of the total U.S. population.

About 4 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2022 were from Mexico, representing the lowest number since the 1990s. Mexico accounted for 37% of the nation’s unauthorized immigrants that year, by far the smallest share on record.

According to Pew, several factors led to this decrease including a broader decline in migration from Mexico to the U.S., some immigrants returning to Mexico and expanded lawful immigration opportunities from Mexico and other countries.

After Mexico, the countries with the largest unauthorized immigrant populations in the U.S. were El Salvador, India, Guatemala and Honduras.

Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Texas saw significant increases in unauthorized immigrant populations between 2019 to 2022. California is the only state that saw a decrease during that time, although it still held the largest amount of unauthorized immigrant populations.

Pew also found that unauthorized immigrants represented about 4.8% of the U.S. workforce in 2022. While that number grew from the previous three years, it remained below the peak high in 2007.

Over 70 million immigrants have arrived in the U.S. since the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act opened up immigration from Asia and Latin America. Since then, about half of U.S. immigrants have come from Latin America, with about a quarter from Mexico alone.

About another quarter have come from Asia, with large numbers from from China, India, and the Philippines, along with groups from Central America and the Caribbean.

The latest wave of immigrants has dramatically changed states’ immigrant populations. In 1980, German immigrants were the largest group in 19 states, Canadian immigrants were the largest in 11 states and Mexicans were the largest in 10 states. By 2000, Mexicans were the largest group in 31 states.

This is highly different from a century ago, where the largest immigrant populations were from Germany and Italy in 1920.

The United States has long had more immigrants than any other country and is home to one-fifth of the world’s international migrants, but other countries with large numbers of unauthorized immigrants have also seen increases in recent years.

Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, India, and countries making up the former Soviet Union all experienced growth in number of unauthorized immigrants from 2019 to 2022.

Follow @Megwiththenews

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