Net Migration from Mexico Falls to Zero—and Perhaps Less
The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill.
Immigration Trends 
04.23.12
01.09.12
U.S. Foreign-Born Population: How Much Change from 2009 to 2010?
The U.S. population in 2010 included 39.9 million foreign-born residents. This estimate, the latest available for the foreign-born population, is 1.5 million, or 4%, higher than the survey’s 38.5 million estimate in 2009.
12.01.11
Unauthorized Immigrants: Length of Residency, Patterns of Parenthood
Nearly two-thirds of the 10.2 million unauthorized adult immigrants in the United States have lived in this country for at least 10 years and nearly half are parents of minor children.
07.14.11
The Mexican-American Boom: Births Overtake Immigration
Births have surpassed immigration as the main driver of the dynamic growth in the nation’s Mexican-American population. From 2000 to 2010, the Mexican-American population grew by 7.2 million as a result of births and 4.2 million as a result of new immigrant arrivals.
03.24.11
Hispanics Account for More than Half of Nation’s Growth in Past Decade
The 2010 Census counted 50.5 million Hispanics in the United States, making up 16.3% of the total population. The nation’s Latino population, which was 35.3 million in 2000, grew 43% over the decade.
02.01.11
Unauthorized Immigrant Population: National and State Trends, 2010
As of March 2010, 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States, virtually unchanged from a year earlier, according to new estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center.
10.29.10
After the Great Recession: Foreign Born Gain Jobs; Native Born Lose Jobs
In the year following the end of the Great Recession in June 2009, foreign-born workers gained 656,000 jobs while native-born workers lost 1.2 million. As a result, the unemployment rate fell for immigrants while it rose for the native born.
09.01.10
U.S. Unauthorized Immigration Flows Are Down Sharply Since Mid-Decade
The annual inflow of unauthorized immigrants to the U.S. was nearly two-thirds smaller in the March 2007 to March 2009 period than it had been from March 2000 to March 2005.
08.11.10
Unauthorized Immigrants and Their U.S.-Born Children
An estimated 340,000 of the 4.3 million babies born in the United States in 2008 were the offspring of unauthorized immigrants, according to a new analysis of Census Bureau data.
07.22.09
Mexican Immigrants: How Many Come? How Many Leave?
The flow of immigrants from Mexico to the United States has declined sharply since mid-decade, but there is no evidence of an increase during this period in the number of Mexican-born migrants returning home from the U.S.
05.28.09
Latino Children: A Majority Are U.S.-Born Offspring of Immigrants
Hispanics now make up 22% of all children under the age of 18 in the United States–up from 9% in 1980–and as their numbers have grown, their demographic profile has changed.
04.14.09
A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States
The nation’s 11.9 million unauthorized immigrants are more geographically dispersed than in the past, according to a new demographic and geographic analysis of this group that includes population and labor force estimates for each state.
10.02.08
Trends in Unauthorized Immigration: Undocumented Inflow Now Trails Legal Inflow
There were 11.9 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States in March 2008. The size of the unauthorized population appears to have declined since 2007.
02.11.08
U.S. Population Projections: 2005-2050
If current trends continue, immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050 and their descendants will account for 82% of the population growth in the United States during this period, according to new projections from the Pew Research Center.
03.28.07
Growing Share of Immigrants Choosing Naturalization
The proportion of all legal foreign-born residents who have become naturalized U.S. citizens rose to 52% in 2005, the highest level in a quarter of a century and a 15 percentage point increase since 1990.
08.10.06
Growth in the Foreign-Born Workforce and Employment of the Native Born
Rapid increases in the foreign-born population at the state level are not associated with negative effects on the employment of native-born workers.
07.05.06
Gender and Migration
Reflecting broad changes in their social and economic status, women around the world have been migrating more in recent decades and as a result have constituted an increasing share of migrant populations almost everywhere.
09.27.05
Rise, Peak and Decline: Trends in U.S. Immigration 1992 – 2004
The number of migrants coming to the United States each year, legally and illegally, grew very rapidly starting in the mid-1990s, hit a peak at the end of the decade, and then declined substantially after 2001.
07.26.05
The New Latino South: The Context and Consequences of Rapid Population Growth
The Hispanic population is growing faster in much of the South than anywhere else in the United States.
06.14.05
Unauthorized Migrants: Numbers and Characteristics
Most of the unauthorized population lives in families, a quarter has at least some college education and illegal workers can be found in many sectors of the US economy.
03.21.05
Estimates of the Size and Characteristics of the Undocumented Population
The undocumented population of the US now numbers nearly 11 million people, including more than 6 million Mexicans according to new estimates based on the most recent official data available.
10.14.03
The Rise Of The Second Generation
As it continues to grow, the composition of the Hispanic population is undergoing a fundamental change: Births in the United States are outpacing immigration as the key source of growth. Over the next twenty years this will produce an important shift in the makeup of the Hispanic population with second-generation Latinos–the U.S.-born children of immigrants– emerging as the largest component of that population. Given the very substantial differences in earnings, education, fluency in English, and attitudes between foreign-born and native-born Latinos, this shift has profound implications for many realms of public policy, and indeed for anyone seeking to understand the nature of demographic change in the United States.
12.17.02
Pew Hispanic Center/Kaiser Family Foundation 2002 National Survey Of Latinos
The Pew Hispanic Center/Kaiser Family Foundation 2002 National Survey of Latinos comprehensively explores the attitudes and experiences of Hispanics on a wide variety of topics. This survey was designed to capture the diversity of the Latino population by including almost 3,000 Hispanics from various backgrounds and groups so that in addition to describing Latinos overall, comparisons can be made among key Hispanic subgroups as well.
07.30.02
Latino Growth In Metropolitan America
The Latino population is rapidly evolving and that its demographic impact on the nation is changing quickly. Significant concentrations of Hispanics are no longer confined to a few regions such as Southern California or the Southwest, or only to a few cities like New York and Miami. Instead, in the coming years Hispanic population growth will most impact communities that had relatively few Latinos a decade ago.
05.09.02
Counting The “Other Hispanics”
This study reports on an alternative estimate of the breakdown of the Hispanic population according to national origin groups. Based on recently released Census Bureau data, the estimate reduces the “other” category by more than half. This estimate does not change the overall size of the Hispanic population, but it does offer a new calculation of how national groups are distributed within that population.
03.21.02
How Many Undocumented
There are more than 5 million unauthorized workers in the U.S. economy. This study estimates that these workers have become a very substantial presence in the sectors where they are concentrated. More than a million undocumented persons are employed in manufacturing and a similar number in the service industries. More than 600,000 work in construction and more than 700,000 in restaurants.
01.24.02
The Socioeconomic Status of Hispanic New Yorkers
This research report presents data showing the major demographic and socioeconomic changes in the Hispanic population of New York in the 1990s. It shows that despite gains in some areas, on average, Hispanics in New York were not significantly better-off in 2000 than in 1990. The household income per capita of Hispanic New Yorkers increased only slightly in the 1990s, compared to a much stronger expansion among White New Yorkers. By 2000, Hispanics displayed per-capita income of about one-third that of the non-Hispanic White population. The roots of the lack of change in Hispanic overall socioeconomic status in the 1990s lie, first, in the major demographic changes in the city, as reflected in an influx of relatively unskilled immigrants and an exodus of relatively skilled, high-income Hispanic New Yorkers; it also responds to the sluggish economic recovery of the city from one of its most severe recessions this century.
01.24.02
Estimates of Numbers of Unauthorized Migrants Residing In the United States
This brief report presents estimates of the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States in mid-2001 for three separate groups: the total unauthorized population, the Mexican unauthorized population, and the non-Mexican Central American unauthorized population. The approach to estimation used is one set forth recently by Bean, et al (2001) that extends and amplifies work originally begun as part of the Mexico/U.S. Binational Migration Study (1997; Bean, et al. 1998). The specific features of the approach are described in detail in Bean, et al (2001). Basically, the method involves subtracting estimates of the numbers of persons residing in the country legally from the numbers of foreign born persons in official government surveys (which are known to contain both legal and unauthorized persons), and then adjusting for extra undercount of such persons in the surveys. The resulting figures give estimates of various unauthorized populations in the country.
Highlights