The Unauthorized Population Today: Steady at 11 Million

This Immigration Policy Center Fact Check reports that recent estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) indicate that the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States has remained unchanged at roughly 11 million since 2009.

This comes after a two-year decline of approximately one million that corresponded closely to the most recent recession, which ran from December 2007 to June 2009. Despite that decline, the new data make clear that the current population of unauthorized immigrants is very much part of the social and economic fabric of the country. Three-fifths of unauthorized immigrants have been in the United States for more than a decade. Unauthorized immigrants comprise more than one-quarter of the foreign-born population and roughly 1-in-20 workers. Approximately 4.5 million native-born U.S.-citizen children have at least one unauthorized parent. In short, unauthorized immigrants who are already in the country have become integral to U.S. businesses, communities, and families.

KJ