E.g., 04/23/2024
E.g., 04/23/2024
U.S. Data

U.S. Data

Immigration_History

More than 43 million people living in the United States—whether as naturalized citizen, legal permanent resident, temporary resident, or unauthorized immigrant—were born in another country, representing 13 percent of the U.S. population. Immigration has ebbed and flowed throughout U.S. history, peaking at nearly 15 percent of the population in 1890 and plummeting to 5 percent in 1970. The data-rich research offered here traces the U.S. immigrant population by size, educational and workforce characteristics, English language proficiency, and more.

For information on U.S. immigrants by state, check out the State Immigration Data Profiles tool. And for detailed profiles on unauthorized immigrants nationally and by state, visit this tool.

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Reports
August 2015
By  Marc R. Rosenblum and Ariel G. Ruiz Soto
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Policy Briefs
August 2015
By  Angelo Mathay and Margie McHugh
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Immigrant women constitute a varied and dynamic population in the United States with 51 percent or 21.2 million of the country's total foreign-born population. Examining key gender-based socioeconomic indicators from origin and fertility to educational attainment and immigration status, this Spotlight raises implications for sending and receiving countries, with respect to labor opportunities, family structure, gender roles, and more.

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An estimated 41.3 million immigrants lived in the United States in 2013, about 13 percent of the total U.S. population, constituting the world's largest foreign-born population. This Spotlight from MPI's Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova offers the most current and sought-after data on immigrants in the United States—including origin, educational attainment, the unauthorized, deportations, and more—in one easy-to-use resource.

Cover SPT China2015

With the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 and normalization of U.S.-China relations in the late 1970s, Chinese immigration to the United States has steadily increased, to a population of more than 2 million. Using the latest data, this Spotlight highlights characteristics of Chinese immigrants from mainland China and Hong Kong, including their top state and metro areas of residence, immigration pathways, educational attainment, and more.

Cover SPT Korea2014

Migration to the United States from the Korean peninsula, largely from South Korea, owes its roots to political, military, and economic factors, with an estimated 1.1 million Korean immigrants in the United States as of 2013. Korean migration to the United States has stalled in recent years, and even declined, with a small but growing number of immigrants and their U.S.-born children returning to Korea, as this article explores.

Cover SPT SSA2014

From 1980 to 2013, the sub-Saharan African immigrant population in the United States increased from 130,000 to 1.5 million, roughly doubling each decade between 1980 and 2010. This profile provides up-to-date demographic information for sub-Saharan immigrants including location, educational attainment, workforce participation, and much more.

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Over the past five decades, Mexicans have constituted the single largest group of immigrants to the United States originating from Latin America. In 2011, 11.7 million Mexican immigrants resided in the United States, representing 29 percent of the U.S. immigrant population and close to 4 percent of the overall U.S. population. This article examines the latest data on Mexican immigrants in the United States, including population size, geographic distribution, admission categories, and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.

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The U.S. immigrant population—estimated at 40.8 million in 2012 — is the nation’s historical numerical high, and it is also the largest foreign-born population in the world. About 20 percent of all international migrants reside in the United States, even as the country accounts for less than 5 percent of global population. This article presents the latest, most sought-after data on immigrants in the United States—by origin, residence, legal status, deportations, languages spoken, and more—in one easy-to-use resource.

Reports
January 2013
This report, Volume 1 of a three-volume set commissioned by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation that examines the immigrant population in Arkansas, provides a demographic and socioeconomic profile of Arkansas immigrants and their children, including a description of immigrant workers in the Arkansas economy. The three volumes build upon a previous study of the Arkansas immigrant population that was published in 2007.
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Immigrants accounted for 16 percent of the 58.8 million college-educated persons in the United States in 2011, with one in three immigrants holding a college degree. In this spotlight, MPI's Qingqing Ji and Jeanne Batalova provide a demographic and socioeconomic profile of college-educated natives and immigrants in the country.

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There were more than 53 million nonimmigrant (temporary) admissions to the United States in 2011. MPI's Qingqing Ji and Jeanne Batalova outline the definition of nonimmigrants and take a detailed look at admissions data and data limitations in this spotlight.

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In 2011, more than 1 million people were granted lawful permanent resident status in the United States. Nearly two-thirds of new LPRs were immigrants with family ties in the United States, report MPI's Joseph Russell and Jeanne Batalova in this updated look at the latest statistics on legal immigration.

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In 2011, the United States granted humanitarian protection to nearly 81,000 immigrants, including some 56,000 refugees and 25,000 asylum seekers. This article takes a detailed look at the most recent refugee and asylum data in the United States – finding that asylum grants in 2011 reversed a downward trend observed since 2007.

Video, Audio
August 7, 2012

Join MPI as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas discusses the application process and policies that the agency has announced to implement the administration’s deferred action program.

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