Foreign-Born Population Grew by 5.1 Million in the Last Two Years
The largest two-year increase ever recorded
By Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler
The foreign-born or immigrant population (legal and illegal) hit new record highs in March 2024 of 51.6 million and 15.6 percent of the total U.S. population. Since March 2022 the foreign-born population has increased 5.1 million, the largest two-year increase in American history. The foreign-born population has never grown this much this fast. Although many think of immigrants only as workers, less than half of those who arrived since 2022 are employed. This analysis is based on the government’s monthly Current Population Survey (CPS), which like any survey has a margin of error, so there are fluctuations in the data. But the increase in the last two years is unlike anything seen before and is statistically significant.
Among the findings:
In March 2024 the foreign-born population reached 51.6 million, 5.1 million more than in March 2022 — the largest two-year increase ever recorded in American History.
The 51.6 million foreign-born residents in March of this year were 15.6 percent of the total U.S. population, also record highs in American history.
Since President Biden took office in January 2021 the foreign-born population has increased by 6.6 million in just 39 months.
We have previously estimated that nearly 58 percent of the increase under President Biden is due to illegal immigration.
If present trends continue, the foreign-born population will reach 62.5 million in 2030 and 82.2 million by 2040 — larger than the current combined populations of 30 states plus the District of Columbia.
Many observers think of immigrants solely as workers, but only 46 percent of the foreign-born who arrived in 2022 or later were employed in the first part of 2024 — similar to the share of new arrivals employed during previous economic expansions.
As in any human population, many newly arrived immigrants are children, elderly, disabled, caregivers, or others with no ability to work or interest in doing so.
Only about 8 percent of the 2.5 million new arrivals who are not working say they are actively looking for work.
The dramatic recent increases in the size of the foreign-born population represent net growth. The number of new arrivals was much higher but was offset by outmigration and natural mortality among the foreign-born already here.
There also is some undercount in this data, so the actual number of foreign residents in the United States is larger.
Introduction
This report is part of a series of recent reports from the Center looking at the size and growth of the foreign-born population in the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS), sometimes referred to as the “household survey”. The CPS is collected each month by the Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).1 While the larger American Community Survey (ACS) is often used to study the foreign-born, the most recent version of the ACS reflects only the population through July 2022 and is now 20 months out of date. It does not fully reflect the ongoing border crisis and resulting surge in immigration. The monthly CPS allows for a much more up-to-date picture of what is happening. In the Appendix of a prior analysis we discuss the ACS compared to the CPS.
We use the terms “immigrant” and “foreign-born” interchangeably in this report.2 The foreign-born as defined by the Census Bureau includes all persons who were not U.S. citizens at birth — mainly naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents, long-term temporary visitors, and illegal immigrants. While the monthly CPS is a very large survey of about 130,000 individuals, the total foreign-born population in the data still has a margin of error of ±573,000 in March 2024 using a 90 percent confidence level. This means there is fluctuation from month to month in the size of this population, making it necessary to compare longer periods of time when trying to determine trends.3
Growth in the Foreign-Born Population
Recent Increase. Figure 1 reports the total number of foreign-born residents in the United States from March 2019 to March 2024. The figure shows that even though the economy was expanding in the months before the pandemic, the foreign-born population was trending down in the latter part of 2019. Once travel restrictions were imposed and Title 42 was implemented at the border, the immigrant population declined through the middle of 2020, hitting a low of 43.8 million in August and September of that year. While immigrants still arrived in 2020, out-migration and natural mortality seem to have been enough to cause a decline in the total immigrant population. However, some of the decline may be due to the difficulty of collecting data on a hard-to-capture population like the foreign-born.4 For this reason, in the discussion that follows we focus on comparing growth from 2021 to 2024 and the years in between. We do not use 2020 as a point of reference.
Growth in the Foreign-Born Population under Biden. By January 2021 the foreign-born population had roughly returned to the size it was in February 2020, right before Covid. Comparing President Biden’s first month in office, January 2021, to March 2024, the most recent data available, shows an increase of 6.6 million. This increase in just 39 months is unprecedented.5 It is roughly equal to the growth in the foreign-born population in the nine years prior to Covid. Figure 2 shows the increase in the foreign-born population, comparing each month to the same month two years earlier. The foreign-born population increased 5.1 million from March 2022 to March 2024. Although the CPS did not identify immigrants until 1994, information in prior censuses and administrative data make clear the numerical increase in the last two years is larger than in any two-year period in American history.6 It is also the case that the 2.8 million increase in just the last year is the largest increase in 25 years and may also be the largest one-year increase in the foreign-born population ever.7
What is so striking about all the recent increases is that they represent net changes, not merely a new inflow. New immigrants add to the total foreign-born population but are offset by emigration and mortality among the existing immigrant population. All births to immigrants in the United States add only to the native-born population by definition. This means the number of new arrivals must be even higher for the foreign-born population to grow this much. In our prior analysis we discuss at length the factors that have led to this extraordinary increase. They include public statements and policy changes by the Biden administration, such as the decision to end the Migrant Protection Protocols, Title 42, the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with Central American countries, and in particular the decision to release several million people encountered at the border. Legal immigration has also rebounded after Covid.
Biden Compared to His Immediate Predecessors. Figure 3 shows the size of the foreign-born population from the start of President Obama’s first term in January 2009 to March of this year, along with margins of error. Short-term fluctuations almost certainly reflect the natural variability of the survey. But growth so far during the Biden administration has averaged 174,000 a month, compared to 42,000 a month during Trump’s presidency before Covid-19 hit — January 2017 to February 2020. The average increase during Biden’s presidency is also more than double the 76,000 a month average during Obama’s second term and nearly triple the average increase of 59,000 in Obama’s first term.8 If Obama’s presidency is taken as a whole, growth averaged about 68,000 per month. Averaging many months together reduces month-to-month fluctuation and shows that the pace of growth during the Biden administration has been spectacularly higher than his immediate predecessors.
Illegal Immigration. In our prior analysis we estimated that 58 percent of the increase in the total foreign-born population since President Biden took office was due to illegal immigration. There is nothing in the most recent data to change that perspective. If correct, then since January 2021 the illegal immigrant population has increased by 3.8 million. Further, of the 51.6 million immigrants living in the country in the March 2024 CPS, some 13.8 million are illegal immigrants. If adjusted for undercount, the total illegal immigrant population would be over 14 million in March 2024.
Immigrants by Sending Region. Table 1 shows the foreign-born population by region in January 2021, the month President Biden took office, and each March from 2021 to 2024.9 Growth in the foreign-born population is being driven by immigrants from Latin America, whose number has grown by 4.2 million since January 2021, with South America up 1.5 million, Central America up 1.1 million, and the Caribbean up nearly 900,000. The number of Mexican immigrants grew by 735,000, all of which was in the last year. Immigrants from the Indian Subcontinent and Middle Eastern immigrants have also grown by 950,000 and 653,000, respectively. Government and non-government researchers have long found that roughly three-fourths of illegal immigrants come from Latin America.10 The recent increase in the foreign-born population from Latin America is an indication of the large role illegal immigration has played in the dramatic increase in the overall size of the foreign-born population since January 2021. While immigration from Latin America has clearly contributed disproportionately to the increase in the foreign-born, the number of immigrants from other regions has also increased substantially.
Historical Perspective. Figure 4 shows the number of foreign-born residents and their share of the U.S. population since 1850, which was the first time they were identified in the census. As already noted, at 51.6 million and 15.6 percent of the population, the foreign-born population is higher now than at any time in American history. The number of immigrants has increased five-fold since 1970, 2.6-fold since 1990, and by more than two-thirds since 2000. As a share of the population, even in 1890 (14.8 percent) and 1910 (14.7 percent) during what is often called the “Great Wave” of immigration, the foreign-born were a smaller share of the population than they are today.11 The scale of recent immigration is so high that it appears to have made the Census Bureau population projections, published in November of last year, obsolete. The bureau projected that the foreign-born share would not reach 15.6 percent until 2040. When thinking about the impact on American society, it seems fair to assume that both the size of the foreign-born population and its share of the overall population matter.12
If Present Trends Continue
Where We Are Headed. In addition to showing the size of the foreign-born population and its share of the U.S. population, Figure 4 also projects what the foreign-born numbers will be in 2030 and 2040 if the trend that began in January 2021 is allowed to continue. At 62.5 million in 2030 and 82.2 million in 2040, the projections show the scale of immigration would be transformative. If the immigrant population reached 82.2 million in 2040 it would be larger than the current combined populations of 30 states plus the District of Columbia. It would also be larger than the current total populations of the Northeast (57 million), the Midwest (69 million), or the West (79 million). While immigration on this scale may seem unlikely, it must be remembered that before it happened, the 5.1 million increase in the foreign-born population in just the last two years would also have been seen as unlikely.
It is worth pointing out that the above projections consider only the immigrant component of the population, not the rest of the population. If, for example, the U.S.-born population grows slower or faster due to a rise or fall in birth or death rates, then the immigrant share of the population in 2030 and 2040 would change. Equally important, the projections for 2030 and 2040 are not predictions. They simply employ a linear model to show what will happen if current trends are allowed to continue.}
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