Who are the new immigrants?
Tara Watson and Simon Hodson
September 11, 2024
Sections
How many new immigrants are there?
What pathways are the new immigrants using to come to the United States?
Demographic Characteristics
Summing Up
How many new immigrants are there?
What pathways are the new immigrants using to come to the United States?
Demographic Characteristics
Summing Up
How many new immigrants are there?
Earlier this year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released estimates suggesting that net immigration—inflows minus outflows—was 3.3 million in 2023. That is much higher than the 1 million or so they projected pre-pandemic for 2023, which was a more typical figure for the 2010s. There is also some uncertainty about the 3.3 million number, which is higher than the most recent Census estimate of 1.1 million net migrants for the year ending July 2023. (See here for a more detailed explanation of why the CBO number seems reasonable.) Here we discuss the new immigrants: how they are arriving to the United States, what we know about them, and the economic implications of larger inflows.
Figure 1
What pathways are the new immigrants using to come to the United States?
Green Cards/Permanent Residents
One set of immigrants includes those entering into the lawful permanent migration category, often known as green card migration. Most green card migration is subject to annual caps set by Congress that were last updated in 1990. Immediate relatives (parents, spouses, and children) of U.S. citizens are eligible for green cards without caps, but other family members face annual limits, country-specific restrictions, and long queues for some applicants. For example, Mexican nationals with a U.S. citizen sibling who are receiving their green card in 2024 first submitted paperwork in 2001. Employers can also sponsor green cards for employees—this process is also subject to caps as well as limits on how many applications can be processed from any given country of origin. Often, employment-based green cards are issued to those who have been living and working in the U.S. on a temporary employment visa.
In total, about 1 million to 1.2 million new green cards are issued annually, though numbers were significantly lower in 2020 and 2021. Green cards are issued to immigrants from a wide range of countries, with about half of new permanent residents coming from the Americas and much of the remainder coming from Asian nations. About half of the roughly 1.1 million people acquiring green cards in 2023 were already in the U.S., and roughly 550,000 are new immigrants.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/who-are-the-new-immigrants/
