Immigration to the United States

Immigration to the United States has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of its history. In absolute numbers, the United States has by far the highest number of immigrants in the world, with 50,661,149 people as of 2019. This represents 19.1% of the 244 million international migrants worldwide, and 14.4% of the United States' population. In 2018, there were almost 90 million immigrants and U.S.-born children of immigrants in the United States, accounting for 28% of the overall U.S. population.

A welcome notice to new immigrants

Naturalization ceremony at Oakton High School in Fairfax County, Virginia, December 2015

Immigrants to the United States take the Oath of Allegiance at a naturalization ceremony at the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, September 2010.

Population growth rate with and without migration in the U.S.

According to the 2016 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, the United States admitted a total of 1.18 million legal immigrants (618k new arrivals, 565k status adjustments) in 2016. Of these, 48% were the immediate relatives of United States citizens, 20% were family-sponsored, 13% were refugees or asylum seekers, 12% were employment-based preferences, 4.2% were part of the Diversity Immigrant Visa program, 1.4% were victims of a crime (U1) or their family members were (U2 to U5), and 1.0% who were granted the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) for Iraqis and Afghans employed by the United States Government. The remaining 0.4% included small numbers from several other categories, including 0.2% who were granted suspension of deportation as an immediate relative of a citizen (Z13); persons admitted under the Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act; children born after the issuance of a parent's visa; and certain parolees from the former Soviet Union, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam who were denied refugee status.

Between 1921 and 1965, policies such as the national origins formula limited immigration and naturalization opportunities for people from areas outside Northwestern Europe. Exclusion laws enacted as early as the 1880s generally prohibited or severely restricted immigration from Asia, and quota laws enacted in the 1920s curtailed Southern and Eastern European immigration. The civil rights movement led to the replacement of these ethnic quotas with per-country limits for family-sponsored and employment-based preference visas. Between 1970 and 2007, the number of first-generation immigrants living in the United States quadrupled from 9.6 million to 38.1 million residents. Census estimates show 45.3 million foreign born residents in the United States as of March 2018 and 45.4 million in September 2021, the lowest three-year increase in decades.

In 2017, out of the U.S. foreign-born population, some 45% (20.7 million) were naturalized citizens, 27% (12.3 million) were lawful permanent residents, 6% (2.2 million) were temporary lawful residents, and 23% (10.5 million) were unauthorized immigrants. The United States led the world in refugee resettlement for decades, admitting more refugees than the rest of the world combined.

Some research suggests that immigration is beneficial to the United States economy. With few exceptions, the evidence suggests that on average, immigration has positive economic effects on the native population, but it is mixed as to whether low-skilled immigration adversely affects low-skilled natives. Studies also show that immigrants have lower crime rates than natives in the United States. The economic, social, and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding such issues as maintaining ethnic homogeneity, workers for employers versus jobs for non-immigrants, settlement patterns, impact on upward social mobility, (crime), and voting behavior.

History

An 1887 illustration of immigrants on an ocean steamer passing the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor

American immigration history can be viewed in four epochs: the colonial period, the mid-19th century, the start of the 20th century, and post-1965. Each period brought distinct national groups, races, and ethnicities to the United States.

Colonial period

During the 17th century, approximately 400,000 English people migrated to America under European colonization. They comprised 83.5% of the white population at the time of the first census in 1790. From 1700 to 1775, between 350,000 and 500,000 Europeans immigrated: estimates vary in sources. Regarding English settlers of the 18th century, one source says 52,000 English migrated during the period of 1701 to 1775, although this figure is likely too low. 400,000–450,000 of the 18th-century migrants were Scots, Scots-Irish from Ulster, Germans, Swiss, and French Huguenots. Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America during the 17th and 18th centuries arrived as indentured servants. They numbered 350,000. From 1770 to 1775 (the latter year being when the American Revolutionary War began), 7,000 English, 15,000 Scots, 13,200 Scots-Irish, 5,200 Germans, and 3,900 Irish Catholics migrated to the Thirteen Colonies. According to Butler (2000), up to half of English migrants in the 18th century may have been young, single men who were well-skilled, trained artisans, like the Huguenots. Based on scholarly analysis, English was the largest single ancestry in all U.S. states at the time of the first census in 1790, ranging from a high of 82% in Massachusetts to a low of 35.3% in Pennsylvania, where Germans accounted for 33.3%.

Origins of immigrant stock in 1790

The Census Bureau published preliminary estimates of the origins of the colonial American population by scholarly classification of the names of all White heads of families recorded in the 1790 census in a 1909 report entitled A Century of Population Growth. These initial estimates were scrutinized and rejected following passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, when the government required accurate official estimates of the origins of the colonial stock population as basis for computing National Origins Formula immigration quotas in the 1920s. In 1927, proposed quotas based on CPG figures were rejected by the President's Committee chaired by the Secretaries of State, Commerce, and Labor, with the President reporting to Congress "the statistical and historical information available raises grave doubts as to the whole value of these computations as the basis for the purposes intended". Concluding that CPG "had not been accepted by scholars as better than a first approximation of the truth", an extensive scientific revision was produced, in collaboration with the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), as basis for computing contemporary legal immigration quotas. For this task scholars estimated the proportion of names of unique derivation from each of the major national stocks present in the population as of the 1790 census. The final results, later also published in the journal of the American Historical Association, are presented below:

Estimated Nationalities of the White American population in the Continental United States as of the 1790 Census

State or Territory	English		Scotch		Scotch-Irish		Irish		German		Dutch		French		Swedish		Spanish		Other		Total
	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%
Connecticut	155,598	67.0%	5,109	2.2%	4,180	1.8%	2,555	1.1%	697	0.3%	600	0.3%	2,100	0.9%	25	nil	−	-	61,372	26.4%	232,236
Delaware	27,786	60.0%	3,705	8.0%	2,918	6.3%	2,501	5.4%	509	1.1%	2,000	4.3%	750	1.6%	4,100	8.9%	−	-	2,041	4.4%	46,310
Georgia	30,357	57.4%	8,197	15.5%	6,082	11.5%	2,010	3.8%	4,019	7.6%	100	0.2%	1,200	2.3%	300	0.6%	−	-	621	1.2%	52,886
Kentucky &  Tennessee	53,874	57.9%	9,305	10.0%	6,513	7.0%	4,838	5.2%	13,026	14.0%	1,200	1.3%	2,000	2.2%	500	0.5%	−	-	1,790	1.9%	93,046
Maine	57,664	60.0%	4,325	4.5%	7,689	8.0%	3,556	3.7%	1,249	1.3%	100	0.1%	1,200	1.3%	−	-	−	-	20,324	21.2%	96,107
Maryland &  District of Columbia	134,579	64.5%	15,857	7.6%	12,102	5.8%	13,562	6.5%	24,412	11.7%	1,000	0.5%	2,500	1.2%	950	0.5%	−	-	3,687	1.8%	208,649
Massachusetts	306,013	82.0%	16,420	4.4%	9,703	2.6%	4,851	1.3%	1,120	0.3%	600	0.2%	3,000	0.8%	75	nil	−	-	31,405	8.4%	373,187
New Hampshire	86,078	61.0%	8,749	6.2%	6,491	4.6%	4,092	2.9%	564	0.4%	100	0.1%	1,000	0.7%	−	-	−	-	34,038	24.1%	141,112
New Jersey	79,878	47.0%	13,087	7.7%	10,707	6.3%	5,439	3.2%	15,636	9.2%	28,250	16.6%	4,000	2.4%	6,650	3.9%	−	-	6,307	3.7%	169,954
New York	163,470	52.0%	22,006	7.0%	16,033	5.1%	9,431	3.0%	25,778	8.2%	55,000	17.5%	12,000	3.8%	1,500	0.5%	−	-	9,148	2.9%	314,366
North Carolina	190,860	66.0%	42,799	14.8%	16,483	5.7%	15,616	5.4%	13,592	4.7%	800	0.3%	4,800	1.7%	700	0.2%	−	-	3,531	1.2%	289,181
Pennsylvania	149,451	35.3%	36,410	8.6%	46,571	11.0%	14,818	3.5%	140,983	33.3%	7,500	1.8%	7,500	1.8%	3,325	0.8%	−	-	16,815	4.0%	423,373
Rhode Island	45,916	71.0%	3,751	5.8%	1,293	2.0%	517	0.8%	323	0.5%	250	0.4%	500	0.8%	50	0.1%	−	-	12,070	18.7%	64,670
South Carolina	84,387	60.2%	21,167	15.1%	13,177	9.4%	6,168	4.4%	7,009	5.0%	500	0.4%	5,500	3.9%	325	0.2%	−	-	1,945	1.4%	140,178
Vermont	64,655	76.0%	4,339	5.1%	2,722	3.2%	1,616	1.9%	170	0.2%	500	0.6%	350	0.4%	−	-	−	-	10,720	12.6%	85,072
Virginia &  West Virginia	302,850	68.5%	45,096	10.2%	27,411	6.2%	24,316	5.5%	27,853	6.3%	1,500	0.3%	6,500	1.5%	2,600	0.6%	−	-	3,991	0.9%	442,117
1790 Census Area	1,933,416	60.9%	260,322	8.2%	190,075	6.0%	115,886	3.7%	276,940	8.7%	100,000	3.2%	54,900	1.7%	21,100	0.7%	−	-	219,805	6.9%	3,172,444
Northwest Territory	3,130	29.8%	428	4.1%	307	2.9%	190	1.8%	445	4.2%	−	-	6,000	57.1%	−	-	−	-	−	-	10,500
(French America)	2,240	11.2%	305	1.5%	220	1.1%	135	0.7%	1,750	8.8%	−	-	12,850	64.3%	−	-	2,500	12.5%	−	-	20,000
Spanish America	610	2.5%	83	0.4%	60	0.3%	37	0.2%	85	0.4%	−	-	−	-	−	-	23,125	96.4%	−	-	24,000
United States	1,939,396	60.1%	261,138	8.1%	190,662	5.9%	116,248	3.6%	279,220	8.7%	100,000	3.1%	73,750	2.3%	21,100	0.7%	25,625	0.8%	219,805	6.8%	3,226,944

1. and Welsh; ethnic Welsh people making up approximately 7–10% of settlers from England and Wales
2. and Finnish (including Forest Finns); ethnic Finns making up more than half of New Swedish colonial settlers

Historians estimate that fewer than one million immigrants moved to the United States from Europe between 1600 and 1799. By comparison, in the first federal census, in 1790, the population of the United States was enumerated to be 3,929,214.

These statistics do not include the 17.8% of the population who were enslaved, according to the (1790 census).

Early United States era

Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island in 1902

The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited naturalization to "free white persons"; it was expanded to include black people in the 1860s and Asian people in the 1950s. This made the United States an outlier, since laws that made racial distinctions were uncommon in the world in the 18th century.

The 1794 (Jay Treaty) provided freedom of movement for Americans, British subjects, and Native Americans into British and American jurisdictions, Hudson's Bay Company land excepted. The treaty is still in effect to the degree that it allows Native Americans born in Canada (subject to a (blood quantum) test) to enter the United States freely.

In the early years of the United States, immigration (not counting the enslaved, who were treated as merchandise rather than people) was fewer than 8,000 people a year, including French refugees from the slave revolt in Haiti. Legal importation of enslaved African was prohibited after 1808, though many were smuggled in to sell. After 1820, immigration gradually increased. From 1836 to 1914, over 30 million Europeans migrated to the United States.

After an initial wave of immigration from China following the California Gold Rush, Congress passed its first immigration law, the (Page Act of 1875) which banned (Chinese women). This was followed by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, banning virtually all immigration from China until the law's repeal in 1943. In the late 1800s, immigration from other Asian countries, especially to the West Coast, became more common.

Exclusion Era

The peak year of European immigration was in 1907, when 1,285,349 persons entered the country. By 1910, 13.5 million immigrants were living in the United States.

While the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 had already excluded immigrants from China, the immigration of people from Asian countries in addition to China was banned by the (Immigration Act of 1917), also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, which also banned homosexuals, people with intellectual disability, and people with an anarchist worldview. The Emergency Quota Act was enacted in 1921, limiting immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere by national quotas equal to 3 percent of the number of foreign-born from each nation in the (1910 census). The Act aimed to further restrict immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, particularly Italian, Slavic, and Jewish people, who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s. The temporary quota system was superseded by the National Origins Formula of the Immigration Act of 1924, which computed national quotas as a fraction of 150,000 in proportion to the national origins of the entire White American population as of the (1920 census), except those having origins in the nonquota countries of the Western Hemisphere (which remained unrestricted).

Origins of immigrant stock in 1920

The National Origins Formula was a unique computation which attempted to measure the total contributions of "blood" from each national origin as a share of the total stock of White Americans in 1920, counting immigrants, children of immigrants, and the grandchildren of immigrants (and later generations), in addition to estimating the colonial stock descended from the population who had immigrated in the colonial period and were enumerated in the 1790 census. European Americans remained predominant, although there were shifts toward Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe from immigration in the period 1790 to 1920. The formula determined that ancestry derived from Great Britain accounted for over 40% of the American gene pool, followed by German ancestry at 16%, then Irish ancestry at 11%. The restrictive immigration quota system established by the Immigration Act of 1924, revised and re-affirmed by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, sought to preserve this demographic makeup of America by allotting quotas in proportion to how much blood each national origin had contributed to the total stock of the population in 1920, as presented below:

The White Population of the United States in 1920, apportioned according to the National Origins Formula prescribed by §11(c) of the Immigration Act of 1924. About 56.5% of White Americans were deemed to be of postcolonial immigrant stock as of 1920, while 43.5% were deemed colonial stock. Consequent immigration quotas in effect until 1965 were based upon these calculations.

European Americans in 1790 by nationality, estimated by classification of family names, according to a 1909 preliminary estimate in Census Bureau report A Century of Population Growth (top half) and revised figures according to a scientific study by the Census Bureau in collaboration with the American Council of Learned Societies commissioned in the 1920s (bottom half)

Country of origin	Total		Colonial stock		Postcolonial stock
					Total		Immigrants		Children of		Grandchildren of
	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%
Austria	843,051	0.9%	14,110	nil	828,951	1.6%	305,657	2.3%	414,794	2.2%	108,500	0.5%
Belgium	778,328	0.8%	602,300	1.5%	176,028	0.3%	62,686	0.5%	62,042	0.3%	51,300	0.3%
Czechoslovakia	1,715,128	1.8%	54,700	0.1%	1,660,428	3.1%	559,895	4.1%	903,933	4.7%	196,600	1.0%
Denmark	704,783	0.7%	93,200	0.2%	611,583	1.1%	189,934	1.4%	277,149	1.4%	144,500	0.7%
Estonia	69,013	0.1%	−	-	69,013	0.1%	33,612	0.3%	28,001	0.2%	7,400	nil
Finland	339,436	0.4%	4,300	nil	335,136	0.6%	149,824	1.1%	146,612	0.8%	38,700	0.2%
France	1,841,689	1.9%	767,100	1.9%	1,074,589	2.0%	155,019	1.1%	325,270	1.7%	594,300	2.9%
Germany	15,488,615	16.3%	3,036,800	7.4%	12,451,815	23.3%	1,672,375	12.2%	4,051,240	21.1%	6,728,200	32.6%
Greece	182,936	0.2%	−	-	182,936	0.3%	135,146	1.0%	46,890	0.2%	900	nil
Hungary	518,750	0.6%	−	-	518,750	1.0%	318,977	2.3%	183,773	1.0%	16,000	0.1%
Ireland	10,653,334	11.2%	1,821,500	4.4%	8,831,834	16.5%	820,970	6.0%	2,097,664	10.9%	5,913,200	28.7%
Italy	3,462,271	3.7%	−	-	3,462,271	6.5%	1,612,281	11.8%	1,671,490	8.7%	178,500	0.9%
Latvia	140,777	0.2%	−	-	140,777	0.3%	69,277	0.5%	56,000	0.3%	15,500	0.1%
Lithuania	230,445	0.2%	−	-	230,445	0.4%	117,000	0.9%	88,645	0.5%	24,800	0.1%
Netherlands	1,881,359	2.0%	1,366,800	3.3%	514,559	1.0%	133,478	1.0%	205,381	1.1%	175,700	0.9%
Norway	1,418,592	1.5%	75,200	0.2%	1,343,392	2.5%	363,862	2.7%	597,130	3.1%	382,400	1.9%
Poland	3,892,796	4.1%	8,600	nil	3,884,196	7.3%	1,814,426	13.2%	1,779,570	9.3%	290,200	1.4%
Portugal	262,804	0.3%	23,700	0.1%	239,104	0.5%	104,088	0.8%	105,416	0.6%	29,600	0.1%
Romania	175,697	0.2%	−	-	175,697	0.3%	88,942	0.7%	83,755	0.4%	3,000	nil
Russia	1,660,954	1.8%	4,300	nil	1,656,654	3.1%	767,324	5.6%	762,130	4.0%	127,200	0.6%
Spain	150,258	0.2%	38,400	0.1%	111,858	0.2%	50,027	0.4%	24,531	0.1%	37,300	0.2%
Sweden	1,977,234	2.1%	217,100	0.5%	1,760,134	3.3%	625,580	4.6%	774,854	4.0%	359,700	1.7%
Switzerland	1,018,706	1.1%	388,900	0.9%	629,806	1.2%	118,659	0.9%	203,547	1.1%	307,600	1.5%
Mandate of Syria & Leb.	73,442	0.1%	−	-	73,442	0.1%	42,039	0.3%	31,403	0.2%	−	-
Turkey	134,756	0.1%	−	-	134,756	0.3%	102,669	0.8%	31,487	0.2%	600	nil
United Kingdom	39,216,333	41.4%	31,803,900	77.0%	7,412,433	13.8%	1,365,314	10.0%	2,308,419	12.0%	3,738,700	18.1%
Kingdom of Yugoslavia	504,203	0.5%	−	-	504,203	0.9%	220,668	1.6%	265,735	1.4%	17,800	0.1%
Other Countries	170,868	0.2%	3,500	nil	167,368	0.3%	71,553	0.5%	93,815	0.5%	2,000	nil
All Quota Countries	89,506,558	100%	40,324,400	45.1%	49,182,158	55.0%	12,071,282	13.5%	17,620,676	19.7%	19,490,200	21.8%
Nonquota Countries	5,314,357	5.6%	964,170	2.3%	4,350,187	8.1%	1,641,472	12.0%	1,569,696	8.2%	1,139,019	5.5%
1920 Total	94,820,915	100%	41,288,570	43.5%	53,532,345	56.5%	13,712,754	14.5%	19,190,372	20.2%	20,629,219	21.8%

Polish immigrants working on a farm in 1909; the welfare system was practically non-existent before the 1930s and the economic pressures on the poor were giving rise to child labor.

Immigration patterns of the 1930s were affected by the Great Depression. In the final prosperous year, 1929, there were 279,678 immigrants recorded, but in 1933, only 23,068 moved to the U.S. In the early 1930s, more people emigrated from the United States than to it. The U.S. government sponsored a (Mexican Repatriation) program which was intended to encourage people to voluntarily move to Mexico, but thousands were deported against their will. Altogether, approximately 400,000 Mexicans were repatriated; half of them were US citizens. Most of the Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis and World War II were barred from coming to the United States. In the post-war era, the Justice Department launched (Operation Wetback), under which 1,075,168 Mexicans were deported in 1954.

Since 1965

Immigrant trunks from Sweden in the late 19th century (on left) and from a refugee camp in Thailand in 1993 (on right)

Boston's Chinatown in Boston in 2008

In recent decades, immigration to nearly every Western country has risen sharply, with the U.S. growing from 9% (1990) to 15% (2020) of the population being born abroad. The slopes of the tops of the differently-colored columns show the rate of percent increase in foreign-born people living in the respective countries.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Cellar Act, abolished the system of national-origin quotas. By equalizing immigration policies, the act resulted in new immigration from non-European nations, which changed the ethnic demographics of the United States. In 1970, 60% of immigrants were from Europe; this decreased to 15% by 2000.

In 1986 president Ronald Reagan signed immigration reform that gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants in the country.

In 1990, George H. W. Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990, which increased legal immigration to the United States by 40%. In 1991, Bush signed the (Armed Forces Immigration Adjustment Act 1991), allowing foreign service members who had served 12 or more years in the US Armed Forces to qualify for permanent residency and, in some cases, citizenship.

In November 1994, California voters passed (Proposition 187) amending the state constitution, denying state financial aid to illegal immigrants. The federal courts voided this change, ruling that it violated the federal constitution.

Appointed by President Bill Clinton, the recommended reducing legal immigration from about 800,000 people per year to approximately 550,000. While an influx of new residents from different cultures presents some challenges, "the United States has always been energized by its immigrant populations", said President Bill Clinton in 1998. "America has constantly drawn strength and spirit from wave after wave of immigrants ... They have proved to be the most restless, the most adventurous, the most innovative, the most industrious of people."

In 2001, President George W. Bush discussed an accord with Mexican President Vicente Fox. Due to the September 11 attacks, the possible accord did not occur. From 2005 to 2013, the US Congress discussed various ways of controlling immigration. The Senate and House were unable to reach an agreement.

Nearly 8 million people immigrated to the United States from 2000 to 2005; 3.7 million of them entered without papers. Hispanic immigrants suffered job losses during the late-2000s recession, but since the recession's end in June 2009, immigrants posted a net gain of 656,000 jobs.

Nearly 14 million immigrants entered the United States from 2000 to 2010, and over one million persons were naturalized as U.S. citizens in 2008. The per-country limit applies the same maximum on the number of visas to all countries regardless of their population and has therefore had the effect of significantly restricting immigration of persons born in populous nations such as Mexico, China, India, and the Philippines—the leading countries of origin for legally admitted immigrants to the United States in 2013; nevertheless, China, India, and Mexico were the leading countries of origin for immigrants overall to the United States in 2013, regardless of legal status, according to a U.S. Census Bureau study.

Over 1 million immigrants were granted legal residence in 2011.

For those who enter the US illegally across the Mexico–United States border and elsewhere, migration is difficult, expensive and dangerous. Virtually all undocumented immigrants have no avenues for legal entry to the United States due to the restrictive legal limits on green cards, and lack of immigrant (visas) for low-skilled workers. Participants in debates on immigration in the early 21st century called for increasing enforcement of existing laws governing illegal immigration to the United States, building a barrier along some or all of the 2,000-mile (3,200 km) Mexico-U.S. border, or creating a new guest worker program. Through much of 2006 the country and Congress was engaged in a debate about these proposals. As of April 2010^[update] few of these proposals had become law, though a partial border fence had been approved and subsequently canceled.

Modern reform attempts

Beginning with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, presidents from both political parties have steadily increased the number of border patrol agents and instituted harsher punitive measures for immigration violations. Examples of these policies include Ronald Reagan's (Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986) and the Clinton-era (Prevention Through Deterrence) strategy. The sociologist (Douglas Massey) has argued that these policies have succeeded at producing a perception of border enforcement but have largely failed at preventing emigration from Latin America. Notably, rather than curtailing illegal immigration, the increase in border patrol agents decreased (circular migration) across the U.S.–Mexico border, thus increasing the population of Hispanics in the U.S.

Presidents from both parties have employed anti-immigrant rhetoric to appeal to their political base or to garner bi-partisan support for their policies. While Republicans like Reagan and Donald Trump have led the way in framing Hispanic immigrants as criminals, Douglas Massey points out that "the current moment of open racism and xenophobia could not have happened with Democratic acquiescence". For example, while lobbying for his 1986 immigration bill, Reagan framed unauthorized immigration as a "national security" issue and warned that "terrorists and subversives are just two days' driving time" from the border. Later presidents, including Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, used similar "security" rhetoric in their efforts to court Republican support for comprehensive immigration reform. In his 2013 State of the Union Address, Obama said "real reform means strong border security, and we can build on the progress my administration has already made – putting more boots on the southern border than at any time in our history".

Trump administration policies

ICE reports that it removed 240,255 immigrants in fiscal year 2016, as well as 226,119 in FY2017 and 256,085 in FY2018. Citizens of Central American countries (including Mexico) made up over 90% of removals in FY2017 and over 80% in FY2018.

In January 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily suspending entry to the United States by nationals of seven (Muslim-majority) countries. It was replaced by another (executive order) in March 2017 and by a presidential proclamation in September 2017, with various changes to the list of countries and exemptions. The orders were temporarily suspended by federal courts but later allowed to proceed by the Supreme Court, pending a definite ruling on their legality. Another executive order called for the immediate construction of a wall across the U.S.–Mexico border, the hiring of 5,000 new border patrol agents and 10,000 new immigration officers, and federal funding penalties for sanctuary cities.

The "zero-tolerance" policy was put in place in 2018, which legally allows children to be separated from adults unlawfully entering the United States. This is justified by labeling all adults that enter unlawfully as criminals, thus subjecting them to criminal prosecution. The Trump Administration also argued that its policy had precedent under the Obama Administration, which had opened family detention centers in response to migrants increasingly using children as a way to get adults into the country. However, the Obama Administration detained families together in administrative, rather than criminal, detention.

Other policies focused on what it means for an asylum seeker to claim credible fear. To further decrease the amount of asylum seekers into the United States, Attorney General Jeff Sessions released a decision that restricts those fleeing gang violence and domestic abuse as "private crime", therefore making their claims ineligible for asylum. These new policies that have been put in place are putting many lives at risk, to the point that the ACLU sued Jeff Sessions along with other members of the Trump Administration. The ACLU claimed that the policies put in place by the Trump Administration undermined the fundamental human rights of those immigrating into the United States, specifically women. They also claimed that these policies violated decades of settle asylum law.

In April 2020, President Trump said he will sign an executive order to temporarily suspend immigration to the United States because of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

Biden administration policies

In January 2023, regarding the southern border crisis, Joe Biden announced a new immigration policy that would allow 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela but will also expel the migrants from those countries who violate US laws of immigration. The policy has faced criticism from "immigration reform advocates and lawyers who decry any expansion of Title 42."

Origins of the U.S. immigrant population, 1960–2016

% of foreign-born population residing in the U.S. who were born in ...

	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2018
Europe-Canada	84%	68%	42%	26%	19%	15%	15%	14%	14%	14%	14%	13%	13%
South and East Asia	4%	7%	15%	22%	23%	25%	25%	26%	26%	26%	27%	27%	28%
Other Latin America	4%	11%	16%	21%	22%	24%	24%	24%	24%	24%	24%	25%	25%
Mexico	6%	8%	16%	22%	29%	29%	29%	28%	28%	28%	27%	26%	25%

Note: "Other Latin America" includes Central America, South America and the Caribbean.

Persons obtaining legal permanent resident status by fiscal year

Year		Year		Year		Year		Year		Year		Year		Year
1855	200,877	1880	457,257	1905	1,026,499	1930	241,700	1955	237,790	1980	524,295	2005	1,122,257	2018	1,096,611
1860	153,640	1885	395,346	1910	1,041,570	1935	34,956	1960	265,398	1985	568,149	2010	1,042,625	2019	1,031,765
1865	248,120	1890	455,302	1915	326,700	1940	70,756	1965	296,697	1990	1,535,872	2015	1,051,031	2020	707,362
1870	387,203	1895	258,536	1920	430,001	1945	38,119	1970	373,326	1995	720,177	2016	1,183,505	2021	740,002
1875	227,498	1900	448,572	1925	294,314	1950	249,187	1975	385,378	2000	841,002	2017	1,127,167	2022	1,018,349

Decade	Average per year
1890–99	369,100
1900–09	745,100
1910–19	634,400
1920–29	429,600
1930–39	69,900
1940–49	85,700
1950–59	249,900
1960–69	321,400
1970–79	424,800
1980–89	624,400
1990–99	977,500
2000–09	1,029,900
2010–19	1,063,300

Refugee numbers

(Operation Allies Refuge) with Afghans being evacuated on a U.S. Air Force (Boeing C-17) plane during the fall of Kabul in 2021

According to the Department of State, in the 2016 fiscal year 84,988 refugees were accepted into the US from around the world. In the fiscal year of 2017, 53,691 refugees were accepted to the US. There was a significant decrease after Trump took office; it continued in the fiscal year of 2018 when only 22,405 refugees were accepted into the US. This displays a massive drop in acceptance of refugees since the Trump Administration has been in place.^[]

On September 26, 2019, the Trump administration announced that it planned to allow only 18,000 refugees to resettle in the United States in the 2020 fiscal year, its lowest level since the modern program began in 1980.

In 2020 the Trump administration announced that it planned to slash refugee admissions to U.S. for 2021 to a record low of 15,000 refugees down from a cap of 18,000 for 2020, making 2021 the fourth consecutive year of declining refugee admissions under the Trump term.

Period	Refugee Program
2018	45,000
2019	30,000
2020	18,000
2021	15,000

Contemporary immigration

Legal immigration to the United States over time

A naturalization ceremony in Salem, Massachusetts in 2007

As of 2018^[update], approximately half of immigrants living in the United States are from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Many Central Americans are fleeing because of desperate social and economic circumstances in their countries. Some believe that the large number of Central American refugees arriving in the United States can be explained as a "blowback" to policies such as (United States military interventions) and (covert operations) that installed or maintained in power authoritarian leaders allied with wealthy land owners and multinational corporations who stop family farming and democratic efforts, which have caused drastically sharp social inequality, wide-scale poverty and rampant crime. Economic austerity dictated by neoliberal policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund and its ally, the U.S., has also been cited as a driver of the dire social and economic conditions, as has the U.S. "War on Drugs", which has been understood as fueling murderous gang violence in the region. Another major migration driver from Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) are crop failures, which are (partly) caused by climate change. "The current debate ... is almost totally about what to do about immigrants when they get here. But the 800-pound gorilla that's missing from the table is what we have been doing there that brings them here, that drives them here", according to (Jeff Faux), an economist who is a distinguished fellow at the (Economic Policy Institute).

Until the 1930s most legal immigrants were male. By the 1990s women accounted for just over half of all legal immigrants. Contemporary immigrants tend to be younger than the native population of the United States, with people between the ages of 15 and 34 substantially overrepresented. Immigrants are also more likely to be married and less likely to be divorced than native-born Americans of the same age.

Immigrants are likely to move to and live in areas populated by people with similar backgrounds. This phenomenon has remained true throughout the history of immigration to the United States. Seven out of ten immigrants surveyed by (Public Agenda) in 2009 said they intended to make the U.S. their permanent home, and 71% said if they could do it over again they would still come to the US. In the same study, 76% of immigrants say the government has become stricter on enforcing immigration laws since the September 11 attacks ("9/11"), and 24% report that they personally have experienced some or a great deal of discrimination.

Public attitudes about immigration in the U.S. were heavily influenced in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. After the attacks, 52% of Americans believed that immigration was a good thing overall for the U.S., down from 62% the year before, according to a 2009 Gallup poll. A 2008 Public Agenda survey found that half of Americans said tighter controls on immigration would do "a great deal" to enhance U.S. national security. Harvard political scientist and historian Samuel P. Huntington argued in his 2004 book that a potential future consequence of continuing massive immigration from Latin America, especially Mexico, could lead to the bifurcation of the United States.

The estimated population of illegal Mexican immigrants in the US decreased from approximately 7 million in 2007 to 6.1 million in 2011 Commentators link the reversal of the immigration trend to the economic downturn that started in 2008 and which meant fewer available jobs, and to the introduction of tough immigration laws in many states. According to the (Pew Hispanic Center), the net immigration of Mexican born persons had stagnated in 2010, and tended toward going into negative figures.

More than 80 cities in the United States, including Washington D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Detroit, Jersey City, Minneapolis, Denver, Baltimore, Seattle, Portland, Oregon and Portland, Maine, have sanctuary policies, which vary locally.

Origin countries

Immigration to the United States over time by region

Inflow of New Legal Permanent Residents by region, 2015–2022

Region	2015	% of total	2016	% of total	2017	% of total	2018	% of total	2019	% of total	2020	% of total	2021	% of total	2022	% of total	/% in 2022
Americas	438,435	41.7%	506,901	42.8%	492,726	43.7%	497,860	45.4%	461,710	44.8%	284,491	40.2%	311,806	42.1%	431,697	42.4%	27.8%
Asia	419,297	39.9%	462,299	39.1%	424,743	37.7%	397,187	36.2%	364,761	35.4%	272,597	38.5%	295,306	39.9%	414,951	40.7%	28.8%
Africa	101,415	9.7%	113,426	9.6%	118,824	10.5%	115,736	10.6%	111,194	10.8%	76,649	10.8%	66,211	8.9%	89,571	8.8%	26.1%
Europe	85,803	8.2%	93,567	7.9%	84,335	7.5%	80,024	7.3%	87,597	8.5%	68,994	9.8%	61,521	8.3%	75,606	7.4%	18.6%
Oceania	5,404	0.5%	5,588	0.5%	5,071	0.5%	4,653	0.4%	5,359	0.5%	3,998	0.6%	4,147	0.6%	5,132	0.5%	19.2%
Unknown	677	0.1%	1,724	0.1%	1,468	0.1%	1,151	0.1%	1,144	0.1%	633	>0.1%	1,011	0.1%	1,392	0.1%	≈
Total	1,051,031	100%	1,183,505	100%	1,127,167	100%	1,096,611	100%	1,031,765	100%	707,632	100%	740,002	100%	1,018,349	100%	27.3%

Source: US Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics

Top 15 Countries of Origin of Permanent Residents, 2016–2022:

Country	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022
India	64,687	60,394	59,821	54,495	46,363	93,450	120,121
Mexico	174,534	170,581	161,858	156,052	100,325	107,230	117,710
China	81,772	71,565	65,214	62,248	41,483	49,847	62,022
Dominican Republic	61,161	58,520	57,413	49,911	30,005	24,553	36,007
Cuba	66,516	65,028	76,486	41,641	16,367	23,077	31,019
Philippines	53,287	49,147	47,258	45,920	25,491	27,511	27,692
El Salvador	23,449	25,109	28,326	27,656	17,907	18,668	25,609
Vietnam	41,451	38,231	33,834	39,712	29,995	16,312	22,604
Brazil	13,812	14,989	15,394	19,825	16,746	18,351	20,806
Colombia	18,610	17,956	17,545	19,841	11,989	15,293	16,763
Venezuela	10,772	11,809	11,762	15,720	12,136	14,412	16,604
Guatemala	13,002	13,198	15,638	13,453	7,369	8,199	15,328
South Korea	21,801	19,194	17,676	18,479	16,244	12,351	[]
Honduras	13,302	11,387	13,794	15,901	7,843	9,425	14,762
Canada	12,793	11,484	9,898	11,388	11,297	12,053	13,916
Jamaica	23,350	21,905	20,347	21,689	12,826	13,357	13,603
Total	1,183,505	1,127,167	1,096,611	1,031,765	707,362	740,002	1,018,349

Charts

Inflow of New Legal Permanent Residents by continent in 2020:

  Americas (40.2%)

  Asia (38.5%)

  Africa (10.8%)

  Europe (9.8%)

  Australia and Oceania (0.6%)

  Unknown (0.1%)

Languages spoken among U.S. immigrants, 2016:

  English only (16%)

  Spanish (43%)

  Chinese (6%)

  Hindi and related languages (5%)

  Filipino/Tagalog (4%)

  French (3%)

  Vietnamese (3%)

  Arabic (2%)

  Other (18%)

Demography

Extent and destinations

Little Italy in New York City, c. 1900

A crowd at the (Philippine Independence Day Parade) in New York City

Galveston immigration stations

Year	Number of foreign-born	Percent foreign-born
1850	2,244,602	9.7
1860	4,138,697	13.2
1870	5,567,229	14.4
1880	6,679,943	13.3
1890	9,249,547	14.8
1900	10,341,276	13.6
1910	13,515,886	14.7
1920	13,920,692	13.2
1930	14,204,149	11.6
1940	11,594,896	8.8
1950	10,347,395	6.9
1960	9,738,091	5.4
1970	9,619,302	4.7
1980	14,079,906	6.2
1990	19,767,316	7.9
2000	31,107,889	11.1
2010	39,956,000	12.9
2017	44,525,500	13.7
2018	44,728,502	13.5
2019	44,932,799

• 2010, 2017, 2018

The United States admitted more legal immigrants from 1991 to 2000, between ten and eleven million, than in any previous decade. In the most recent decade,^[] the 10 million legal immigrants that settled in the U.S. represent roughly one third of the annual growth, as the U.S. population increased by 32 million (from 249 million to 281 million). By comparison, the highest previous decade was the 1900s, when 8.8 million people arrived, increasing the total U.S. population by one percent every year. Specifically, "nearly 15% of Americans were foreign-born in 1910, while in 1999, only about 10% were foreign-born".

By 1970, immigrants accounted for 4.7 percent of the US population and rising to 6.2 percent in 1980, with an estimated 12.5 percent in 2009. As of 2010^[update], 25% of US residents under age 18 were first- or second-generation immigrants. Eight percent of all babies born in the U.S. in 2008 belonged to illegal immigrant parents, according to a recent^[] analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Legal immigration to the U.S. increased from 250,000 in the 1930s, to 2.5 million in the 1950s, to 4.5 million in the 1970s, and to 7.3 million in the 1980s, before becoming stable at about 10 million in the 1990s. Since 2000, legal immigrants to the United States number approximately 1,000,000 per year, of whom about 600,000 are Change of Status who already are in the U.S. Legal immigrants to the United States now^[] are at their highest level ever, at just over 37,000,000 legal immigrants. In reports in 2005–2006, estimates of illegal immigration ranged from 700,000 to 1,500,000 per year. Immigration led to a 57.4% increase in foreign-born population from 1990 to 2000.

Foreign-born immigration has caused the U.S. population to continue its rapid increase with the foreign-born population doubling from almost 20 million in 1990 to over 47 million in 2015. In 2018, there were almost 90 million immigrants and U.S.-born children of immigrants (second-generation Americans) in the United States, accounting for 28% of the overall U.S. population.

While immigration has increased drastically over the 20th century, the foreign-born share of the population is, at 13.4, only somewhat below what it was at its peak in 1910 at 14.7%. A number of factors may be attributed to the decrease in the representation of foreign-born residents in the United States. Most significant has been the change in the composition of immigrants; prior to 1890, 82% of immigrants came from North and Western Europe. From 1891 to 1920, that number decreased to 25%, with a rise in immigrants from East, Central, and South Europe, summing up to 64%. Animosity towards these ethnically different immigrants increased in the United States, resulting in much legislation to limit immigration in the 20th century.

Origin

Country of birth for foreign-born population in the United States (1960–2015)

Country of birth	2015	2010	2000	1990	1980	1970	1960
Mexico	11,513,528	11,599,653	9,177,487	4,298,014	2,199,221	759,711	575,902
India	2,348,687	1,837,838	1,022,552	450,406	206,087	51,000	N/A
China	2,034,383	1,583,634	988,857	529,837	286,120	172,132	N/A
Philippines	1,945,345	1,810,537	1,369,070	912,674	501,440	184,842	104,843
El Salvador	1,323,592	1,201,972	817,336	465,433	94,447	N/A	6,310
Vietnam	1,314,927	1,231,716	988,174	543,262	231,120	N/A	N/A
Cuba	1,227,031	1,057,346	872,716	736,971	607,184	439,048	79,150
South Korea	1,064,960	1,085,151	864,125	568,397	289,885	38,711	N/A
Dominican Republic	1,057,439	866,618	687,677	347,858	169,147	61,228	11,883
Guatemala	923,562	822,947	480,665	225,739	63,073	N/A	5,381
Canada	818,441	808,772	820,771	744,830	842,859	812,421	952,506
Jamaica	727,634	671,197	553,827	334,140	196,811	68,576	N/A
Colombia	723,561	648,594	509,872	286,124	143,508	N/A	N/A
United Kingdom	696,048	685,938	677,751	640,145	669,149	686,099	833,058
Haiti	643,341	572,896	419,317	225,393	92,395	N/A	4,816
Honduras	603,179	502,827	282,852	108,923	39,154	N/A	6,503
Germany	577,282	617,070	706,704	711,929	849,384	832,965	989,810
Peru	447,223	419,363	278,186	144,199	55,496	N/A	N/A
Ecuador	437,581	428,747	298,626	143,314	86,128	N/A	N/A
Poland	422,208	450,537	466,742	388,328	418,128	548,107	747,750
Russia	391,974	391,101	340,177	333,725	406,022	463,462	690,598
Iran (Incl. Kurdistan)	377,741	353,169	283,226	210,941	N/A	N/A	N/A
Taiwan	376,666	365,981	326,215	244,102	75,353	N/A	N/A
Brazil	373,058	332,250	212,428	82,489	40,919	N/A	13,988
Pakistan	371,400	301,280	223,477	91,889	30,774	N/A	N/A
Italy	348,216	368,699	473,338	580,592	831,922	1,008,533	1,256,999
Japan	346,887	334,449	347,539	290,128	221,794	120,235	109,175
Ukraine	344,565	324,216	275,153	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Nigeria	298,532	221,077	134,940	55,350	25,528	N/A	N/A
Guyana	274,118	257,272	211,189	120,698	48,608	N/A	N/A
Venezuela	265,282	182,342	107,031	42,119	33,281	N/A	6,851
Nicaragua	252,196	250,186	220,335	168,659	44,166	N/A	9,474
Thailand	247,614	224,576	169,801	106,919	54,803	N/A	N/A
Trinidad and Tobago	234,483	231,678	197,398	115,710	N/A	N/A	N/A
Hong Kong	228,316	216,948	203,580	147,131	N/A	N/A	N/A
Ethiopia	226,159	164,046	69,531	34,805	7,516	N/A	N/A
Bangladesh	221,275	166,513	95,294	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Iraq	212,608	148,673	89,892	44,916	32,121	N/A	N/A
Laos	188,385	192,469	204,284	171,577	54,881	N/A	N/A
Argentina	187,052	170,120	125,218	92,563	68,887	N/A	N/A
Egypt	179,157	143,086	113,396	66,313	N/A	N/A	N/A
Portugal	175,555	186,142	203,119	210,122	177,437	91,034	N/A
France	175,198	157,577	151,154	119,233	120,215	105,385	N/A
Cambodia	159,827	156,508	136,978	118,833	20,175	N/A	N/A
Ghana	158,999	120,785	65,572	20,889	7,564	N/A	N/A
Romania	158,033	163,431	135,966	91,106	66,994	N/A	84,575
Myanmar	137,190	89,553	32,588	19,835	11,236	N/A	N/A
Greece	134,654	136,914	165,750	177,398	210,998	177,275	159,167
Israel	134,172	133,074	109,719	86,048	N/A	N/A	N/A
Kenya	126,209	95,126	40,682	14,371	6,250	N/A	N/A
Ireland	124,411	128,496	156,474	169,827	197,817	251,375	338,722
Lebanon	120,620	119,523	105,910	86,369	52,674	N/A	22,217
Nepal	119,640	63,948	11,715	2,262	844	N/A	N/A
Turkey	113,937	102,242	78,378	55,087	51,915	N/A	52,228
Spain	109,712	86,683	82,858	76,415	73,735	N/A	N/A
Bosnia and Herzegovina	105,657	115,600	98,766	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Panama	103,715	104,080	105,177	85,737	60,740	N/A	N/A
South Africa	99,323	83,298	63,558	34,707	16,103	N/A	N/A
Chile	97,391	92,948	80,804	55,681	35,127	N/A	N/A
Indonesia	96,158	92,555	72,552	48,387	29,920	N/A	N/A
Somalia	92,807	N/A	35,760	2,437	N/A	N/A	N/A
Saudi Arabia	90,836	48,916	21,083	12,632	17,317	N/A	N/A
Syria	88,226	64,240	54,561	36,782	N/A	N/A	16,717
Armenia	86,727	80,972	65,280	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Australia	86,447	74,478	60,965	42,267	36,120	N/A	22,209
Costa Rica	86,186	83,034	71,870	43,350	29,639	N/A	N/A
Albania	85,406	77,091	38,663	5,627	7,381	9,180	9,618
Netherlands	84,579	85,096	94,570	96,198	103,136	110,570	118,415
Liberia	83,221	71,062	39,029	11,455	N/A	N/A	N/A
Afghanistan	79,298	60,314	45,195	28,444	N/A	N/A	N/A
Morocco	74,009	58,728	34,682	15,541	N/A	N/A	N/A
Malaysia	72,878	58,095	49,459	33,834	10,473	N/A	N/A
Jordan	72,662	60,912	46,794	31,871	N/A	N/A	N/A
Bulgaria	68,658	61,931	35,090	8,579	8,463	N/A	8,223
Hungary	67,594	75,479	92,017	110,337	144,368