Washington, .- The United States is the country that has more immigrants in the world, and among its 44.4 million people born abroad has foreigners of almost all nationalities, according to a report released today by the Pew Center of Research.
The immigrant population has been growing substantially since 1965, when the country abandoned the old quota system by nations, and has quadrupled since then, with the arrival of 44.4 million people in 2017, almost 25% of all migrants in the world.
“Immigrants now represent 13.6% of the US population, almost triple the proportion in 1979,” the report said.
“Even so, the proportion of immigrants is still below the maximum of 14.8% reached in 1890, when there were 9.2 million immigrants in the country.”
Most of these immigrants are in the country legally and in 2017 45% of them had acquired US citizenship.
In 2017, approximately 27% of immigrants were permanent residents and 5% were in the country with temporary visas, while almost 23% of them were undocumented.
The report added that between 1990 and 2007 the number of undocumented immigrants almost tripled, from 3.5 million to the record of 12.2 million, and then that population was reduced by 1.7 million people by 2017.
“The decrease in the undocumented immigrant population is due, to a large extent, to the reduction in the number of migrants from Mexico, which between 2007 and 2017 decreased by 2 million people.
A peculiar phenomenon among immigrants in the United States is that not all of them, although they have been legal residents for many years, choose to acquire American citizenship, something to which they are entitled after five years of legal residence.
In fiscal year 2018, some 800,000 immigrants applied for naturalization, and the number of these procedures has been increasing in recent years, although annual totals remain below the 1.4 million applications initiated in 2007.
In 2017, the most represented countries in the immigrant population were Mexico, with 11.2 million people; China with 2.9 million; India with 2.6 million; the Philippines with 2 million, and El Salvador with 1.4 million.
Currently more than one million immigrants arrive in the United States each year and in 2017 the largest contributors to that flow were India, with 126,000 people; Mexico with 124,000; China with 121,000, and Cuba with 41,000.
As for what the report points out as “race and ethnicity”, in almost every year since 2010, comparatively more “Asians” have arrived than “Hispanics”. And it is projected that the “Asians” will be the largest group of immigrants by 2055, surpassing the “Hispanics”.
The PEW center estimates that by 2065, Asians will represent about 38% of the immigrant population, compared to 31% of Hispanics, 20% of white immigrants, Hispanics and 9% of blacks.
The population born abroad will reach in that year 2065 the 78 million people, according to the projections quoted in the report, and “immigrants and their descendants will account for 88% of the growth of the US population by 2065.”
Another group within the immigrants are the refugees, who since 1980 have counted some 3 million people relocated in the country, a figure greater than that accepted by any other.
In fiscal year 2018, the United States accepted 7,878 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (35% of the total), 3,555 from Myanmar (16%), 2,365 from Ukraine (12%) and 2,228 from Bhutan (10%).
Regarding its distribution by states, approximately 45% of the 44.4 million immigrants in the country live in California (24.8%), Texas (11%) and New York (10%), according to the Pew study. (EFEUSA)
