Western Hemisphere Comprises Larger Share of New Immigrants

Half of newcomers (2020 to 2022) are now from the Americas compared to one-third a decade ago

Analysis of data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) collected in the first half of 2022 shows that the number and share of new immigrants (legal and illegal together) from the Western Hemisphere, excluding Canada, has increased significantly. Not only is immigration up from Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America, but immigration from the rest of the world has declined. As a result, 2022 is the first time since 2006 that the CPS shows more than half of new legal and illegal immigrants, also referred to as the foreign-born, came from these regions. Newly arrived immigrants in the CPS include the survey year and the two prior years, so the new numbers include the fall-off in all immigration due to Covid-19, particularly in 2020, as well as the surge of illegal immigration that began in 2021. As more data is released from the Census Bureau, a clearer picture will emerge, but it seems that a significant shift has occurred in the composition of new immigrants.

Among the findings:

In 2022, 52 percent of all new immigrants (legal and illegal together) were from the Western Hemisphere, excluding Canada, compared to 33 percent of new arrivals in 2014. New arrivals are those who came in 2020, 2021 or the first part of 2022.

The increase in the share from the Western Hemisphere was partly due to a numerical increase in newcomers from that region relative to the recent past, particularly from countries other than Mexico, but was also caused by a decline in newcomers from the rest of the world.

The number and share of new immigrants from East Asia has declined significantly. In 2022, only 12 percent of newcomers came from the region, compared to 25 percent in 2014.

The number and share of new immigrants from the Indian subcontinent also fell, declining from 16 percent of newcomers in 2018 to only 11 percent in 2022.

The increasing share of immigrants from the Western Hemisphere almost certainly reflects, in part, the surge of illegal immigration since the start of 2021, but also that new legal immigration has returned to pre-Covid levels somewhat more quickly from the Western Hemisphere than it has for the rest of the world.

Immigrants from the Western Hemisphere tend to be less educated than those from other sending regions. As a result, the increase in new immigration from this part of the world means that the education level of new immigrants overall has fallen somewhat, after steadily increasing for a number of years.

In 2022, 18 percent of all new immigrants (ages 18 to 64) had not completed high school, compared to 12 percent of new arrivals in 2018. The share of new immigrants with at least a bachelor’s degree fell from 50 percent in 2018 to 44 percent in 2022.

We do not have an estimate of new illegal immigrants based on the arrival data in the CPS at this time. But it is almost certain that more than half of all immigrants who have arrived since 2020 are illegal immigrants. This includes those encountered at the border and released, those who made it past the border patrol, and visa overstayers.

Introduction

This analysis uses the Current Population Survey (CPS), which is collected each month by the Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), primarily to measure labor market conditions. The monthly CPS, which is sometimes called the “household survey”, includes some 60,000 households. Beginning in 1994, the survey began to ask questions on citizenship, country of birth, and year of entry into the United States on a regular basis. It is the most up-to-date survey data available designed to be representative of the U.S. population that identifies immigrants. Immigrants in Census Bureau data, whom the government typically refers to as the foreign-born, include all persons who were not U.S. citizens at birth — naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents, temporary visitors, and illegal immigrants.

To obtain more statistically robust estimates of newcomers, we average the monthly Current Population Survey for the first six months of 2022. The data shows that immigrants from the Western Hemisphere except Canada — Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America — accounted for more than half of newly arrived legal and illegal immigrants. Throughout this report we use the terms “Western Hemisphere”, “Latin America”, and “the Americas” interchangeably.

Later this month, the Census Bureau will begin to release data from the 2021 American Community Survey (ACS). While a much larger survey than the CPS, the ACS data will only reflect conditions through July 2021, so it will not reflect most of the surge of illegal immigration that took place at the southern border beginning in 2021. In contrast, the CPS does reflect conditions through the first part of 2022. However, the government codes responses in the public-use CPS to the year of entry question into multi-year cohorts. In even-numbered years, like 2022, recent arrivals are those who came in the two years prior to survey, plus the year the data was collected.1 This means that in the 2022 data, new arrivals came in 2020, 2021, and the first part of 2022. In the CPS from 2020, new arrivals came in 2018 to 2020; in 2018, newcomers arrived in 2016 to 2018, and so on.

Findings

An Increasing Share from the Western Hemisphere. Figure 1 reports the share of recent immigrants from different regions of the world using the CPS.2 It shows that, in 2022, 52 percent of all new immigrants (legal and illegal together) were from the Western Hemisphere, excluding Canada, compared to 33 percent of new arrivals in 2014. After declining from the early 2000s, the increase in the share of new immigration from Latin America represents a significant rebound. The big increase is in the share of newcomers from non-Mexican Western Hemisphere countries. However, Mexico, which declined significantly as a share of newcomers after 2006, has also increased to some extent in the newest data, from 9 percent of new arrivals in 2018 to 17 percent in 2022. Their share of new immigrants in 2022 is the highest percentage from Mexico since 2010, though the current share is still well below the level in the early 2000s. Prior research as well as border encounter figures all show that immigrants from Latin America make up most, but by no means all, of the illegal immigrant population.3 The increasing share of new arrivals from the region reflects, at least in part, the surge of illegal immigration on the southern border. Also, as we discuss below, legal immigration from Latin America seems to have returned more quickly to pre-Covid levels in 2021 and 2022 than legal immigration from the rest of the world and this, too, helps explain the results in Figure 1.

It should be noted that Figure 1 is only the population shares for new legal and illegal immigrants; it does not reflect the total stock of legal and illegal immigrants in the United States. The population shares by region in the overall population of immigrants living in the country shift much more slowly compared to fluctuations in new arrivals because new arrivals are only a modest share of the total immigrant population.

https://cis.org/Report/Western-Hemisphere-Comprises-Larger-Share-New-Immigrants

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