Number of foreign-born people hits record high in U.S., despite slow population growth

The number of foreign-born people in the United States increased by more than 15% between 2010 and 2022, to just over 46 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

That’s more foreign-born people — those who were not U.S. citizens at birth — than ever before, despite slow population growth.

“The increase probably could have been larger than it was over the last decade,” said demographer William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “This increase was not as large as it was in previous decades, particularly between 1990 and 2000.”

The foreign-born U.S. population grew from 19 million to 31 million, an increase of 12 million, between 1990 and 2000. In contrast, the same group grew by only 6.2 million, from 40 million to 46.2 million during the period 2010-2022.

The slowdown can be attributed to several main factors, Frey says.

“The Trump administration has reduced some levels of immigration with various aspects of its policy, and then, of course, with the pandemic,” he says. “But then at the very end of that period it started to increase again, but we won’t really see most of it until next year or the year after that when they come out (with) the next reports.

Despite early indications that the immigrant population grew at a faster rate in 2023, Frey expects overall population growth to slow in the future.

“Especially among the younger population. In order to improve the outlook for the workforce, in order to generate more people entering the workforce, we are going to have to increase our immigration,” he says. “It’s very political, but I think a reasonable economic way to look at it would be to make sure that we continue to have reasonable levels of immigration.”

Census figures show that the education level of foreign-born people living in the United States is increasing. In 2010, 68% of people in this group completed secondary or higher education, while in 2022 this figure increased to 75%.

In the states with the most immigrants – California (26.5%), New Jersey (23.2%), New York (22.6%) and Florida (21.1%) – people born in foreigners represent more than a fifth of the population.