Washington: Statistics released recently by the US Census Board show that legal and illegal immigrants together formed 13.9 % of the US population of 330 million, as of July 2022. This ratio was 13.6% the previous year. In other words, it can be said that one out of seven US residents is foreign-born, a term used in the report.
Indian and Chinese immigrants comprised 6% each of the total immigration count in 2022. The number of Indians as per the 2022 census was 28,40,000, as against 27,09,000 the previous year - an increase of 4.8%. Chinese immigrants showed an increase of 79,000, totalling 28,30,000 - an increase of nearly 3%. Though Mexicans continued to top the list at 106,80,000 (or 23% of the immigrant population), there was a slight drop of less than 1% from the previous year’s statistic.
Compared to the number of immigrants from these top three countries, numbers of those from Afghanistan and Venezuela are less significant at 4,07,000 and 6,70,000 respectively. However, owing to the influx of asylum seekers and refugees from these two countries, the percentage increase in 2022 over 2021 data is significant at 229% and 22% respectively.
Commenting on the alarm raised by some sections over the rise in number of immigrants, David J Bier, associate director of immigration studies at Cato Institute, a Washington based think-tank, points out in his post that “the immigrant share of the US population rose just 0.3 percentage points from 13.6% to 13.9% from July 2021 to July 2022.” He goes on to explain that the increase in immigrant share of the population over the last decade (2012-2022) was the lowest ever. Immigrants were 13.1% of the US population in 2012, which has now increased by just 0.7 percentage points.