Foreign-Born Population Grows, But Relative Size Not Unprecedented

While the number of immigrants in the U.S. as well as their share of the population has generally been rising, the level of the foreign-born population is not unprecedented. As of 2023, the latest year available through U.S. Census data, 14.3 percent of the U.S. population was foreign-born. Data aggregated by the Migration Policy Institute shows that throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the foreign-born population of the U.S. had been higher in relative terms, approaching 15 percent on several occasions, before reaching a low of just 4.7 percent in 1970.

Between mid-2020 and mid-2021, net migration to the United States (the number of immigrants arriving minus those leaving) only amounted to 247,000 people, down from the pre-pandemic figure of around 600,000 between 2018 and 2019. Post-pandemic, this has now risen by 1.6 million between 2022 and 2023, while the total immigrant population in the U.S. reached 47.8 million. An annual net migration of more than 1 million people is closer to that of the pre-Trump era. In the past decade, net migration reached its peak between 2015 and 2016 at 1,049,000 net arrivals, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The term foreign-born refers to people residing in the United States who aren't U.S. citizens or weren't U.S. citizens at birth. This includes temporary and permanent residents, naturalized citizens, asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants.