Guatemalan Immigrants in the United States
May 14, 2025
Spotlight
By Diego Chaves-González, Esther Jiménez Atochero, and Jeanne Batalova
Haga clic aquí para leer este artículo en español.
The nearly 1.3 million immigrants from Guatemala in 2023 represented less than 3 percent of all 47.8 million immigrants in the United States, but this group has been growing at a much faster rate than the total U.S. foreign-born population.
Guatemalan migration to the United States has risen significantly since the latter half of the 20th century, spurred by political and economic instability, including a 36-year civil war (1960-96) that impelled many Indigenous and Ladino (people of mixed ancestry) Guatemalans to migrate first to Mexico and then to the United States. Other contributing factors for this northward movement include high poverty in rural areas, displacement due to natural disasters, insecurity after the war, and plentiful job opportunities in the United States.
Today, Guatemala is one of the countries most reliant on remittances, with nearly 20 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) as of 2023 due to money sent to loved ones by emigrants and others abroad, primarily in the United States.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/guatemalan-immigrants-united-states
