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.
About three-quarters of U.S. adults say undocumented immigrants mostly fill jobs U.S. citizens do not want.
The size of Europe’s unauthorized immigrant population in 2017 was less than half the number in the United States.
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.
There were 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2017. The number of Mexican unauthorized immigrants declined since 2007.
Jeffrey S. Passel, senior demographer, on the research techniques used to derive the unauthorized immigrant population estimate in the U.S. and the challenges involved.
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 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.
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.
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