Key facts about the changing U.S. unauthorized immigrant population
The unauthorized immigrant population’s size and composition has ebbed and flowed significantly over the past 30 years.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
The unauthorized immigrant population’s size and composition has ebbed and flowed significantly over the past 30 years.
37% of those ages 18 to 29 say they moved, someone moved into their home or they know someone who moved because of the outbreak.
Those who have not responded to the census so far are likely to be from groups the census previously has struggled to count accurately.
There were 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2017. The number of Mexican unauthorized immigrants declined since 2007.
The number of Mexican unauthorized immigrants has fallen since its peak of 6.9 million in 2007 and was lower in 2017 than in any year since 2001.
In 2016, a third of unauthorized immigrant adults were proficient in English – up from a quarter in 2007.
Unauthorized immigrants make up a quarter of all U.S. foreign-born residents. Our new interactive offers data on unauthorized immigrants by state.
About 250,000 babies were born to unauthorized immigrant parents in the United States in 2016, the latest year for which information is available, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data about illegal immigration. This represents a 36% decrease from a peak of about 390,000 in 2007.
Lawful immigrants account for three-quarters of the foreign-born population in the U.S. – 33.8 million people out of 44.7 million people in 2015.
About a million immigrants receive U.S. green cards each year, but fewer than half are new arrivals from other countries. The majority already live in the United States on temporary visas.
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