Mexicans decline to less than half the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population for the first time
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.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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.
In 2016, the 20 U.S. metro areas with the most unauthorized immigrants were home to 6.5 million of them, or 61% of the estimated total.
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.
The number and share of Americans living in multigenerational family households have continued to rise. In 2016, a record 64 million people, or 20% of the U.S. population, lived with multiple generations under one roof.
As the Mexican share of the total declined, the unauthorized immigrant population in the U.S. in 2015 was smaller than when the Great Recession ended.
About 629,000 foreign visitors who were expected to leave the U.S. in fiscal 2016 were still in the U.S. when the fiscal year ended Sept. 30.
The increase in the potential labor force will slow markedly as Baby Boomers retire. Immigrants will play the primary role in future growth of the working-age population.
About 3.9 million kindergarten through 12th-grade students in U.S. public and private schools in 2014 were children of unauthorized immigrants.
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