A Baseline for U.S. Immigration
By how much has unauthorized immigration changed this century? Surprising answer, it hasn’t.
On Tuesday, President Trump is expected to initiate one of his core campaign promises – mass deportations of unauthorized immigrants - with raids expected to start in Chicago on Tuesday. How this will play out is anyone’s guess. As we know President Trump talks with a lot of bluster but does not always come through with results. During his first term, he deported about 1.5 million people, almost the exact same number as President Biden despite there being very few deportations (and few unauthorized entries, as well) during the height of the Covid pandemic in 2021. For comparison President Obama deported 2.9 million people in his first term and 1.9 million in his second. Although President Trump has talked tough on immigrants with a criminal past, he didn’t focus on this group during his first term and, instead, focused “resources on visa overstays, not serious criminals.”
To better understand the current status of immigration, and particularly unauthorized immigration, in the U.S., let’s step back with the lens of history and compare to the present based primarily on data, charts, and research reports from the Pew Research Center. I concentrate on three basic sets of statistics: the total number of immigrants, unauthorized immigrants and housing, and unauthorized immigrants and the labor market.
All of these factors paint a similar picture, there has been very little change in the numbers surrounding unauthorized immigration since the early years of the George W. Bush Presidency and the cries of crisis by Trump, Vance, Stephen Miller, and the rest of Trump’s gang, are simply incorrect. In fact, immigrants (legal and otherwise) contribute vast amounts in labor productivity and tax payments to the U.S. economy.
1. Broad Immigration Trends
As of 2023 there were about 48 million immigrants living within the U.S. This comprised about 14% of the U.S. population and nearly a return to the peak immigrant share seen during the second half of the 19th Century and the first decade of the 20th Century when just under 15% of the U.S. population was comprised of immigrants. The rise in immigration since the 1970s occurred primarily due to a 1965 change in U.S. immigration law that broadened the ability for immigration from Asian and Latin American countries.
The location of immigration follows trends and waves. Most recently about one-half of all immigrants in the US arrive from Latin America. In the mid-19th century, most immigrants arrived from northern and western Europe (Germany, Ireland, and the U.K.); in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the majority came from southern and eastern Europe (Italy, Austro-Hungary, Russia and Poland). This is the wave that filled the NYC tenements and slums and created neighborhoods like Five Points and the Lower East Side. These neighborhoods contained abysmal poverty and infamous reputations for vice and crime. These groups were also the subject of discrimination and ridicule. Even reformers saw these newly arrived Europeans as not true Americans. In How the Other Half Lives, reformer and housing advocate Jacob Riis wrote of the people living in the tenement neighborhoods,
“One may find for the asking an Italian, a German, a French, African, Spanish, Bohemian, Russian, Scandinavian, Jewish, and Chinese colony. … The one thing you shall vainly ask for in the chief city of America is a distinctively American community. There is none; certainly not among the tenements.”
To Riis, none of these newly arrived residents, that would provide the labor to feed the 20thcentury U.S. industrial might, were true Americans. Today many view contemporary immigrants who have a non-western-European background in the same way. Even President Trump has stated a preference for more immigrants from “places like Norway” and not “shithole” countries (referring in this quote to Haiti and Africa, but one can easily imagine him thinking the same about many Latin American countries given other derogatory comments that he has made). People like Trump don’t understand the value that immigrants contribute nor do they understand history.
2. Unauthorized Immigrant Trends and Housing
Today about three-quarters of foreign-born residents are here legally. About one-half are naturalized citizens, a little over one-quarter are temporary or permanent lawful residents, slightly less than one-quarter are unauthorized.
Despite a small increase at the end of President Trump’s first term and continuing during President Biden’s term, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. today is still less than the peak during President George W. Bush’s second term. In 2007 it is estimated that 12.2 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the U.S. As of 2022, the most recent date for which estimates are available, there were about 11.0 million. (Today, the number is likely somewhat higher but still less than the 2007 peak.) The states with the largest number of unauthorized immigrants are California, Texas, Florida, New York and New Jersey. All contain over 1 million unauthorized residents (if NY and NJ are combined).
The status of the living situation of unauthorized immigrants is more complicated than many realize. A single unauthorized immigrant living in the U.S. without other family is rare. Overall, the 11 million unauthorized immigrants live in about 6.3 million homes. Almost 70% of these homes that contain an unauthorized immigrant also contain a lawful immigrant or a U.S. born resident. These lawful immigrants and U.S. born residents amount to 11 million additional people in these homes. About 4.4 million of these people are U.S. born children with at least one unauthorized parent. How the Trump administration plans to handle deportations of these mixed status families is unclear at this point in time. Recent reports suggest that President Trump will attempt to end birthright citizenship with an executive order despite its protection under the 14th amendment of the U.S. constitution.
In total there are under 2 million U.S. households that contain only unauthorized immigrants. The pressure on U.S. housing prices from unauthorized immigration was a loud talking point for President Trump and Vice President Vance during the campaign. Yet, less than 1.5% of U.S. households do not contain a legal resident or U.S. citizen. Of course, this number is likely larger in areas with larger number of immigrants which could create localized pressure on housing prices. Still unauthorized immigration simply is not the primary cause of a widespread housing affordability crisis.
3. Unauthorized Immigration and the Labor Market
Like the other trends above, despite a recent and relatively small uptick, the number of unauthorized workers in the U.S. has not dramatically changed in the past 2 decades. We have a similar number of unauthorized workers in the U.S. today as we had at the end of the Bush presidency in 2007.
The total number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. labor force has remained between 7 and 8 million workers since early this century and has held steady at a 4.5 to 5.5 percent share of the U.S. workforce. Most recent estimates place the share at 4.8% down from the peak of 5.4% in 2007.
These workers tend to be concentrated in a handful of vital industries such as construction and agriculture. Again the share of unauthorized workers in these industries has not dramatically changed in recent decades. According to the USDA around 40% of agricultural workers are unauthorized. Construction labor contains around 15-25% unauthorized immigrant labor.
Finally unauthorized immigrant workers pay over $76 billion in federal, state and local taxes (about $9,500 per worker), $23 billion to Social Security, and $6 billion to Medicare. In total these workers pay about $13,000 per worker in taxes and contributions to the U.S. social safety net despite most working in low paying occupations.
Conclusion
Much of Trump’s bluster over unauthorized immigration is overstated. Every statistic that one wants to look at has changed little since the last half of President Bush’s second term in office. Simply put, there isn’t an unauthorized immigration crisis. The only crisis that may result is the deportation of vast numbers of essential workers. Imagine what would happen to food and housing prices if all of a sudden 25 percent of agriculture and construction workers don’t show up to work tomorrow. That would be true crisis.
Troy Tassier is a professor of economics at Fordham University and the author of The Rich Flee and the Poor Take the Bus: How Our Unequal Society Fails Us during Outbreaks.
Data and charts from Pew Resource Center and USDA.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/27/key-findings-about-us-immigrants/
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor