The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) recently released its latest estimates of the size of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population, finding that between 2019 and 2023, the unauthorized immigrant population grew by 3 million, or an average of 6 percent per year. According to the MPI, the nation had not seen yearly increases this large since the early 2000s.
Jenny Van Hook, distinguished professor of sociology and demography at Penn State and Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) cofunded faculty member, is an MPI Nonresident Fellow who analyzes U.S. Census Bureau data. Van Hook and fellow analysists Ariel G. Ruiz Soto and Julia Gelatt used an updated methodology that better addresses the undercounts of new migrants to arrive at estimates of unauthorized immigrant populations.
According to Van Hook, who is also director of SSRI’s Population Research Institute, even with the new methodology, it can still be hard to nail down the basic facts about who these immigrants are, where they live and how their numbers have changed in the past few decades.
“The MPI estimates tells us the almost half of foreign-born US residents are citizens, while another 19% are lawful permanent residents who could become naturalized citizens over time. Another 5% are in the country on temporary visas, while the remaining 27% are undocumented.”
Van Hook and the analysts found that immigration dynamics changed dramatically starting around 2021, as the U.S. economy recovered faster and more fully from the pandemic-induced downturn than much of the rest of the world and U.S. job opportunities expanded rapidly.
“At the same time, economic turmoil and episodes of insecurity in Central America and South America, eruptions of gang violence in the Caribbean, and compounding political repression in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela together fueled new displacement—with some looking northward to the United States,” the analysts wrote.
While the unauthorized immigrant population from Mexico increased slightly in 2022 and 2023, its 5.5 million total as of mid-2023 remains far below the 7.8 million peak set in 2007. Though Mexico remains the top origin country, it held a significantly smaller share of the overall unauthorized population in 2023 than it did in 2010: 40 percent versus 62 percent.
Between 2019 and 2023, the unauthorized immigrant population from Central America increased by 1.7 million, a change driven primarily by migration from Honduras and Guatemala. Additionally, the numbers from South America increased by nearly 750,000, primarily due to large-scale migration from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil.
The analysis also examines the growth in a subset of the unauthorized population with “liminal” (sometimes called “twilight”) status: Those holding a temporary legal protection that offers them short-term relief from deportation and access to work authorization. MPI has long counted asylum applicants and holders of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in its estimates of the unauthorized population, as have other demographers, and now also includes people with humanitarian parole. While the term unauthorized is an imperfect descriptor for noncitizens whom the U.S. government has granted the right of temporary stay, MPI includes these populations given their lack of a visa or other durable legal status, as well as the impermanence of statuses that could be revoked.
“Migrant arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border fell significantly from 2023 to 2024 as result of heightened levels of Mexican enforcement and a series of Biden administration asylum restrictions, suggesting that the growth in the unauthorized immigrant population may have slowed since mid-2023,” the analysts wrote. “Whether this trend continues into 2025 will depend on the actions of the newly inaugurated Trump administration, which is placing high priority on the deportation of large numbers of unauthorized immigrants living in the country and further hardening the U.S.-Mexico border against new arrivals.”
Van Hook reported that many of the undocumented immigrants targeted for deportation have been in the U.S. for decades and have some sort of legal protection. “MPI and others have begun to highlight the growing numbers of unauthorized immigrants with these protections. Our data also shows that 87% of Mexican have been here for a decade or more, have roots here, and many have grounds for contesting deportation.”
Read MPI’s latest estimates of the size and origins of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population here: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/unauthorized-immigrant-population-mid-2023.
Editor’s note: This story is adapted from a release published by the Migration Policy Institute.