Overall Number of U.S. Unauthorized Immigrants Holds Steady Since 2009
In a Pew Research Center report, Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn find that the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population – 11.1 million in 2014 – has stabilized since the end of the Great Recession, as the number from Mexico declined but the total from other regions of the world increased.
The report estimates based on government data. Among world regions, the number of unauthorized immigrants from Asia, Central America and sub-Saharan Africa rose between 2009 and 2014. The number from Mexico has steadily declined since 2007, the first year of the Great Recession, but Mexicans remain more than half (52%) of U.S. unauthorized immigrants. Across the United States, most states saw no statistically significant change in the size of their unauthorized immigrant populations from 2009 to 2014.
In the seven states where the unauthorized immigrant population declined, falling numbers of unauthorized Mexican immigrants were the key factor. Meanwhile, among the six states that had increases in their unauthorized immigrant populations, only one – Louisiana – could trace this to a rise in the number of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico.
These are some of the key findings from the latest Pew Research Center estimates based mainly on U.S. Census Bureau data. Details concerning the source data and methods for calculating the estimates are available in the methodology. The recent relative stability in the estimated size of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population is a contrast to previous periods. The number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. rose through the 1990s and early 2000s, peaking at 12.2 million in 2007. The number of unauthorized immigrants declined in 2008 and 2009.
Here are five important facts from the latest study.
1. There were 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S.
2. Mexicans made up 52% of all unauthorized immigrants in 2014, though their numbers had been declining in recent years.
3. The number of unauthorized immigrants from nations other than Mexico grew by 325,000 since 2009, to an estimated 5.3 million in 2014.
4. Six states accounted for 59% of unauthorized immigrants in 2014: California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois.
5. A rising share of unauthorized immigrants have lived in the U.S. for at least a decade. About two-thirds (66%) of adults in 2014 had been in the U.S. at least that long, compared with 41% in 2005.
KJ