Jennifer Van Hook
Jennifer Van Hook is Professor of Sociology and Demography and Research Associate of the Population Research Institute at The Pennsylvania State University. She conducts demographic research on the settlement and incorporation patterns of U.S. immigrants, with one strand of her work focusing on estimates of the size and composition of the unauthorized foreign-born population. Her work also focuses on the social, economic, and health assimilation of immigrants and their descendants.
Dr. Van Hook received her PhD in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin, and has held positions at the Urban Institute and Bowling Green State University before joining the faculty at Penn State.
Explore Content by Jennifer Van Hook
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Repealing Birthright Citizenship Would Significantly Increase the Size of the U.S. Unauthorized Population
Repealing birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to unauthorized immigrants or temporary visa holders would have a contrary result from its stated aim of reducing the unauthorized immigrant population. Projections from MPI and Penn State show that ending birthright citizenship would increase the unauthorized population by 2.7 million as of 2045 and by 5.4 million as of 2075.
The Unauthorized Immigrant Population Expands amid Record U.S.-Mexico Border Arrivals
The U.S. unauthorized immigrant population stood at 13.7 million as of mid-2023. The result of strong U.S. economic recovery from the pandemic and displacement in Latin America, the increase in the size of the unauthorized population is accompanied by a diversifying makeup in nationalities. As Mexico's share of the overall unauthorized population has declined, the shares from Central and South America, in particular, have increased.
Diverse Flows Drive Increase in U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Population
MPI estimates 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the United States as of mid-2022, up from 11.2 million a year earlier. While the country has witnessed high levels of arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border, the unauthorized population also has been marked by significant ongoing declines in the unauthorized from Mexico and other exits, as this analysis explains.
A Turning Point for the Unauthorized Immigrant Population in the United States
The unauthorized immigrant population in the United States stood at approximately 11.2 million people in mid-2021, with larger annual growth than at any point since 2015, according to MPI's latest estimates. Even as the Mexican unauthorized immigrant population continued its decade-long decline, there were new entrants from a growing array of other countries.
Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States: Stable Numbers, Changing Origins
As of 2018, the unauthorized immigrant population in the United States held at 11 million, with origins shifting away from Mexico toward Asia and Central America.
Millions of U.S. Citizens Could Be Excluded under Trump Plan to Remove Unauthorized Immigrants from Census Data
The Trump administration's plan to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the 2020 Census data used to reapportion 435 congressional seats among the 50 states could misclassify as many as 20 million U.S. citizens, as the result of expected data-matching errors. The effects of this exclusion could be most pronounced in low-income urban and rural communities, reducing their voting power relative to more affluent ones, as this commentary explains.
People Leave Footprints: Millions More Unauthorized Immigrants Cannot Be ‘Hidden’ in Data Estimates
An academic study claiming the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population could be as high as 29.5 million was based on flawed methods, this commentary explains.
Is the United States Bad for Children’s Health? Risk and Resilience among Young Children of Immigrants
Children of Mexican immigrants start life with health advantages, but those advantages erode in early childhood as poverty, food insecurity, and limited access take hold.
A Demographic, Socioeconomic, and Health Coverage Profile of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States
Unauthorized immigrants are predominantly low-income, working adults, yet 71 percent of adults lacked insurance in 2011.
The Demographic Impacts of Repealing Birthright Citizenship
Modeling shows that repealing birthright citizenship would swell, not shrink, the U.S. unauthorized population and create a hereditary underclass, this 2010 analysis shows.
