Number of Foreign-Born People in US Hits 46M

(Dreamstime)

The number of foreign-born people living in the United States jumped by more than 15% to a high of over 46 million, the U.S. Census Bureau reports.

The record number comes even as the U.S. reported overall low population growth according to a story posted by VOA.

“The increase probably could have been higher in the last decade than it was,” says demographer William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “This increase hasn’t been as big as it’s been in some of the earlier decades, particularly 1990 to 2000.”

The U.S. foreign-born population increased from 19 million to 31 million from 1990 to 2000. By contrast, the same group increased just 6.2 million, from 40 million to 46.2 million during the 2010-2022 period.

Frey noted: “The Trump administration reduced some of the immigration levels with various aspects of their policy, and then, of course, the pandemic,” he says. “But then, at the very tip of the end of this period, it started to go up again, but we’re not really going to see the bulk of that until next year or the year after, when they come out [with] the next couple of reports.”

However, Frey said he expects slower growth in the future.

“Especially among the younger population. In order to improve the labor force prospects, in order to generate more people coming into the labor force, we’re going to have to increase our immigration,” he said. “That’s very political, but I think a sensible economic way to look at it would be to make sure we continue to have reasonable levels of immigration.”

In April, the Census Bureau reported that more than half of the foreign-born population in the United States lives in just four states — California, Texas, Florida, and New York — and their numbers grew older and more educated over the past dozen years, The Associated Press reported.

In 2022, the foreign-born population was estimated to be 46.2 million people, or almost 14% of the U.S. population, with most states seeing double-digit percentage increases in the last dozen years, according to the figures from the bureau’s American Community Survey.

In California, New Jersey, New York, and Florida, foreign-born individuals comprised more than 20% of each state’s population. They constituted 1.8% of West Virginia’s population, the smallest rate in the U.S.