Estimating the Illegal Immigrant Population Using the Current Population Survey
Data shows number fell from 2019 to 2021 but rebounded by more than one million by early 2022
By Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler on March 29, 2022
Steven A. Camarota is the director of research and Karen Zeigler is a demographer at the Center.
This analysis represents our first attempt to estimate the illegal immigrant population, also referred to as the unauthorized or undocumented, using the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) or “household survey”. We hope to further refine our methods in the future. We estimate that in January of 2022 the illegal immigrant population stood at 11.35 million — a 1.13 million increase over January 2021 when President Biden took office and the ongoing border surge began. Our preliminary estimate for February is 11.46 million. However, our January and February 2022 estimates are not substantially different from our January 2019 estimate of 11.48 million, before the pandemic began. The estimated size and growth of the illegal immigrant population are important because, unlike border apprehension figures, the number of illegal immigrants living in the country is what ultimately determines their impact. The CPS also shows that the total foreign-born population (legal and illegal together), reached 46.7 million in February 2022, a new record high, and an increase of 1.7 million since January 2021.
The Department of Homeland Security, whose methodology we base our analysis on, has illegal estimates only through January 2018. Part of the reason for this is that they, like other researchers, rely on the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey (ACS) to generate their estimates of illegal immigrants. The ACS is a larger survey than the CPS, producing more statistically robust estimates; however, it is only released once a year many months after the data is collected. Moreover, the Census Bureau reports the 2020 ACS was not accurate due to the pandemic. Using the monthly CPS allows us to produce timely estimates that reflect current conditions.
Among the findings of our analysis:
https://cis.org/Report/Estimating-Illegal-Immigrant-Population-Using-Current-Population-Survey
