Webinar: New Undocumented Population Report: Fact-Based Demography in Challenging Times.

Next Wednesday, June 11, at 1pm ET, the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) is hosting a webinar titled New Undocumented Population Report:Fact-Based Demography in Challenging Times.

CMS recently released its annual estimates of the undocumented population, finding that the undocumented population grew to 12.2 million in 2023. These findings stand in contrast to the unsubstantiated allegations being made about the size of the undocumented population, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asserting that there are “20 million illegal immigrants” in the United States.

Here is the executive summary of the report:

In 2023, the US undocumented population reached 12.2 million, exceeding the previous high of 12.0 million in 2008. This report provides estimates of the undocumented population in 2023 based on data collected in the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). The report focuses on trends in annual population growth from 2013 to 2023 for the total population and for 17 countries or areas of origin. It also describes trends in the undocumented population in the six states with the largest undocumented population in 2023.

The CMS estimates of undocumented residents include immigrants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) programs, and the estimates include most of the people that have entered asylum backlogs or received humanitarian parole status since 2021. The estimates were derived using previous CMS estimation procedures except that higher undercount rates were used to estimate the number of undocumented residents that arrived after 2020.

Adjustment for undercount was increased for post-2020 arrivals to account for the unusually large flow across the US/Mexico border in recent years and because relatively more migrants resided in group quarters where enumeration can be difficult. The CMS methodology is summarized after the following section, and information about undercount rates for recent arrivals is shown in the Appendix.

And here are the report’s major findings:

• The total undocumented population increased by two million from 2020 to 2023 after declining by 800,000 from 2013 to 2020 (Figure 1).
• The population from Central America grew by 1.2 million from 2013 to 2023 (Figure 1).
• The population from South America almost doubled in three years — from 820,000 in 2020 to 1.5 million in 2023 (Figure 2).
• The population from Venezuela increased from 55,000 in 2013 to 220,000 in 2020 and then doubled to 445,000 in 2023 (Figure 2).
• The population from Asia grew by 300,000 from 2013 to 2023. Growth for India (310,000) and China (110,000) was partially offset by declines for Korea (−65,000), Philippines (−85,000), and Vietnam (−20,000) over the 10-year period (Figure 3).
• Undocumented population growth accelerated for Central American countries beginning in 2019; rapid growth in undocumented residents from South American countries began in 2021 (Figures 1 and 2).
• The undocumented population increased in all the top six states from 2020 to 2023, but California and Illinois had fewer undocumented residents in 2023 than in 2013. Florida, New York, and New Jersey were the fastest-growing states from 2020 to 2023 (Figure 4).