Immigration to The United States. Just how Bad is It?

Pew Piece on Immigration. The author says it is a short piece. It appears to be much longer than what is claimed. I am going to break this into pieces. It is an update to a post by PEW in 2017. The message in Republicans and Trumps dialogue is the nation is being overrun with immigrants.

The U.S. foreign-born population reached a record 47.8 million in 2023. This is an increase of 1.6 million from the previous year and represents the largest annual increase in more than 20 years.

I will have more to post on immigration and immigrants over the next few days. You do need to know the numbers of immigrants to the US

Key findings about U.S. immigrants

– by Mohamad Moslimani and Jeffrey S. Passel

Pew Research Center

How many immigrants are working in the U.S.?

In 2022, over 30 million immigrants were in the U.S. workforce. Lawful immigrants made up the majority of the immigrant workforce, at 22.2 million. An additional 8.3 million immigrant workers are unauthorized. This is a notable increase over 2019 but about the same as in 2007.

The share of workers who are immigrants increased slightly from 17% in 2007 to 18% in 2022. By contrast, the share of immigrant workers who are unauthorized declined from a peak of 5.4% in 2007 to 4.8% in 2022. Immigrants and their children are projected to add about 18 million people of working age between 2015 and 2035. This would offset an expected decline in the working-age population from retiring Baby Boomers.

How educated are immigrants compared with the U.S. population overall?

On average, U.S. immigrants have lower levels of education than the U.S.-born population. In 2022, immigrants ages 25 and older were about three times as likely as the U.S. born to have not completed high school (25% vs. 7%). However, immigrants were as likely as the U.S. born to have a bachelor’s degree or more (35% vs. 36%).

Immigrant educational attainment varies by origin. About half of immigrants from Mexico (51%) had not completed high school, and the same was true for 46% of those from Central America and 21% from the Caribbean. Immigrants from these three regions were also less likely than the U.S. born to have a bachelor’s degree or more.

On the other hand, immigrants from all other regions were about as likely as or more likely than the U.S. born to have at least a bachelor’s degree. Immigrants from South Asia (72%) were the most likely to have a bachelor’s degree or more.

How well do immigrants speak English?

About half of immigrants ages 5 and older (54%) are proficient English speakers – they either speak English very well (37%) or speak only English at home (17%).

Immigrants from Canada (97%), Oceania (82%), sub-Saharan Africa (76%), Europe (75%) and South Asia (73%) have the highest rates of English proficiency.

From Mexico (36%) and Central America (35%) immigrants have the lowest proficiency rates.

Immigrants who have lived in the U.S. longer are somewhat more likely to be English proficient. Some 45% of immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for five years or less are proficient, compared with 56% of immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for 20 years or more.

Spanish is the most commonly spoken language among U.S. immigrants. About four-in-ten immigrants (41%) speak Spanish at home. Besides Spanish, the top languages immigrants speak at home are English only (17%), Chinese (6%), Filipino/Tagalog (4%), French or Haitian Creole (3%), and Vietnamese (2%).

Update of a PEW post originally published May 3, 2021