New U.S. citizens wave flags during a naturalization ceremony aboard the USS Bataan May 7, 2024 in Miami.
PhotoAP
The numbers from the US Population Census reflect a new record of immigrants in the US despite the slow population growth in the last decade in the country. Immigration restrictions, the pandemic and other factors would be behind the delay, compared to two decades ago.
The number of people in the US who were born abroad increased more than 15% between 2010 and 2022, to just over 46 million, according to the Office of the United States Census.
That’s more foreign-born people, than those who were not U.S. citizens at birth, than ever before, despite slow population growth.
Is about more people born abroad – those who were not US citizens at birth – more than ever before, despite slow population growth.
“The increase probably could have been larger in the last decade than it was,” says demographer William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “This increase has not been as large as it has been in some of the previous decades, particularly from 1990 to 2000.”
The foreign-born American population increased from 19 million to 31 million, an increase of 12 million, from 1990 to 2000. By contrast, the same group increased only 6.2 million, from 40 million to 46.2 million during the period 2010-2022.
The slowdown can be attributed to a couple of main factors, Frey says.
“The Trump administration reduced some of the immigration levels with various aspects of its policy, and then, of course, the pandemic,” he says. “But then at the end of this period it started going up again, but we’re not really going to see most of that until next year or the year after that, when the next two reports come out.”
Despite early indications that the immigrant population grew at a faster pace in 2023, Frey expects slower overall population growth in the future.
“Especially among the younger population. To improve workforce prospects, to generate more people entering the workforce, we’re going to have to increase our immigration,” he says. “That’s very political, but I think a sensible economic way to look at it would be to make sure that we continue to have reasonable levels of immigration.”
Census figures show that the education levels of foreign-born people living in the United States are increasing. In 2010, 68% of people in this group completed high school or higher, while in 2022, that number increased to 75%.
In the states with the most immigrants—California (26.5%), New Jersey (23.2%), New York (22.6%), and Florida (21.1%)—foreign-born people make up more than a fifth of the population.
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