Immigration Facts

• A record 1,046,539 persons were naturalized as U.S. citizens in 2008. The leading countries of birth of the new citizens were Mexico, India and the Philippines.
• The number of first- generation immigrants living in the United States has quadrupled, from 9.6 million in 1970 to about 38 million in 2007.
• The number of undocumented residents reached an estimated 10.3 million in March 2004 with undocumented Mexicans numbering 5.9 million or 57 percent of the total.
• An estimated 1 million people legally migrate to the U.S. yearly.
• From 2000-2009, The U.S. issued over 10 million green cards, the highest decade of American history.
• Currently, there are 38 million immigrants, 24 million of whom are in the workforce.  This does not include temporary workers.
• Less than 10% of new green card holders are from Europe.
• People of extraordinary ability, investors, and immigrants with advanced degrees made up less than 8% of the new immigrants.
• The estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the country have virtually no way to achieve legal status.
• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports that between 2006 and 2007, citizenship applications doubled from 730,000 to 1.38 million.
• There were an estimated 34.2 million immigrants in the United States in 2004, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Of these, 18.3 million came from Latin America, 8.7 million from Asia and 4.7 million from Europe.
• Los Angeles is home to one fifth of the US Hispanic population. First in growth of all US cities, it gained 18% of the Hispanic population between 1900 and 2000.
• Immigrants are an essential element in keeping the American economy strong, from fast food businesses to high-tech industry, they are filling an intrinsic need in the labor force.
• An estimated 11 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants live and work in the United States, or around one in every 20 workers, according to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center based on government figures.
• Despite what many view as the intuitively obvious relationship of immigration to wages, the fact is that most economists have not found a significant link between rising immigration and falling wages, the exception being studies in the early 1990s that showed a slight negative effect on African-American high school dropouts' pay.
• Businesses founded by immigrants are a source of substantial economic and fiscal gain for U.S. citizens.
• During the recent unprecedented expansion in the American economy, immigrant workers were essential in filling jobs ranging from computer programmers to hotel and restaurant workers. As America's workforce ages, and the "baby boomers" retire, immigrants will again play an essential role in reducing a long-term projected labor shortage.
  
  
  

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