Next to the census every decade, we look forward to Pew Research Center Statistical Reports. These unofficial censuses give us valuable information on what our population in the U.S. is looking at. Historians use them as to check historical and current assumptions, and they should inform American political policy and social understanding.
You can go to the Statistical Portrait of the Foreign-Born Population in the United States, 1960-2013 and see it for yourself; for now, these are some highlights:
There were a record 41.3 million immigrants living in the U.S. in 2013, making up 13.1% of the nation’s population. This represents a fourfold increase since 1960, when only 9.7 million immigrants lived in the U.S., accounting for just 5.4% of the total U.S. population.
—A fourfold increase in the immigrant population is striking, but we’re willing to bet that if you asked most Americans what percentage of the U.S. population is made up of immigrants, they would guess something a *lot* higher than 13%. The time and fury spent on immigration in this country would lead anyone to believe that the immigrant population must be at least 30%. And most people would likely say that 90% of the immigrant population is made up of illegal Mexican immigrants, so these two facts are important:
About one-quarter of the U.S. foreign-born population are unauthorized immigrants, while the majority of the nation’s immigrants is in the U.S. legally. Naturalized citizens account for the largest portion of the foreign-born population (41.8%).
…As recently as 2008, immigrants arriving within the past year to the U.S. who were born in Asia have outnumbered those born in Latin America. In the early 2000s, the number of newly arrived immigrants from Latin America greatly outnumbered those arriving from Asia. But with the Great Recession, Latin American immigration slowed sharply, especially from Mexico. The number of new immigrants from Latin America has been about steady since then, but the number of newly arrived Asian immigrants has continued to rise.
—So only one-quarter of 13% of our population is made up of illegal immigrants. The graph is worth a couple hundred words:
What we see is that there are 42.5 million immigrants in the U.S., and 11 million of those came here illegally. The vitriol about “illegals” usually offered by Republicans and Tea Party members claims there are 30 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.; we see that this not true.
We also see that Asian immigration is fast out-pacing Latin American immigration, and it stands to reason that there are illegal Asian immigrants in that 11 million number, but you never hear about that from politicians; they are only ever concerned about Mexico. We can’t tell you exactly why, but if the Asian immigration trend stays on track, we wouldn’t be surprised if, in the next 10 years, you start to hear lots of negative stereotypes about “illegal Asians” and closing ports on the west coast.
The share of immigrants who are proficient in English has declined since 1980, though it has increased slightly in recent years. This decline has been driven mostly by those who speak only English at home, which fell from 30% of immigrants ages 5 and older in 1980 to 16% in 2013. The share who speak English “very well,” meanwhile, has increased slightly, from 27% to 34% over the same time period.
—Anti-immigration people tend to blame Latinos for this, claiming they won’t speak English. But as Latino immigration falls, and Asian immigration rises, it is far more likely that people who are not speaking English only are speaking Chinese, not Spanish. In fact, Latino immigrants’ children are far more likely to switch to all-English than Asian immigrants’ children.
Check out the whole report and know the facts about the ever, ever-changing U.S. demographic.
The Historic Present 