Posted on October 17, 2017

Immigrants and Their Children Now Account for a Record 60 Million in US

Abigail Miller, Daily Mail, October 17, 2017

The immigration population in the United States jumped to a record 43 million people in 2016, according to a new report.

And when adding in the children of those individuals, the number jumps to over 60 million people.

That means that legal and illegal immigrants account for at least one in every five people in the United States, according to a review of federal statistics by the Center for Immigration Studies.

The number of immigrants has skyrocketed in the past 16 years, the study concluded.

‘The enormous number of immigrants already in the country coupled with the settlement of well over a million newcomers each year has a profound impact on American society, including on workers, schools, infrastructure, hospitals and the environment,’ the Center’s director of research Steven Camarota said.

‘The nation needs a serious debate about whether continuing this level of immigration makes sense.’

This rhetoric and the concerns about an explosion of immigration – especially illegal immigration – helped Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election.

His administration has promised to crack down on illegal immigration and refugees, and has shown particular interest in halting people coming from Central and South America.

The report doesn’t specifically go into the percentages of legal and illegal immigrants.

However, according to the Washington Examiner, there are roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

The report did find though that since 2000 the immigrant population has increased by 8million people, and that a large portion of that number came from Mexico and Latin America.

Mexican immigrants, specifically, were found to be the largest foreign-born population in the country in 2016.

Between 2010 and 2016 1.1million new immigrants arrived in the United States from Mexico. However, because of the rate of return migration and mortality the Mexican-born population did not grow during that period.

The report also found that currently the proportion of immigrants living in the United states is the highest it has been in 106 years. As recently as 1980 there were 50 percent fewer immigrants.

Finally, the states with the largest increases in immigration were Texas, Florida and California.