Immigrant Population
The US has admitted an average of about 1 million legal permanent residents per year since the 1989(1) and currently has a foreign-born population of 45.4 million(1) or 13.5% of the total US population, the highest percentage since 1910.
New Legal Immigrants
The origin of immigrants has varied dramatically with time; initially Protestant Northern Europe, followed by Ireland, Italy and Eastern Europe. Immigration was curtailed during the depression and WWII. Since 1950, Latin America and Asia have been the dominant sources(1).
Illegal Immigrants
There are currently (2016) approximately 10.7 million illegal or undocumented immigrants in the US(2). They constitute 24% of the immigrant population and 3% of the total US population.
Trends Since 1970
The US legal immigrant population has grown from 9 million (1970) to 33 million in 2016(1). The undocumented immigrant population peaked at about 12.2 million in 2008 and had declined to an estimated 10.7 million at EOY 2016(2).
Illegal Immigration
A rough measure of illegal immigration can be gotten from the number of SW border apprehensions, which peaked in the 1990s and has been in overall decline ever since(3). I tested the number of apprehensions against the “push” factors of violence and poverty in Mexico. For the former, I used the ratio of the Mexican to US murder rates as a proxy(4) and found no correlation. There is a pretty decent correlation (r2 = 0.63) with the “push” of poverty in Mexico, for which I used the percentage of the population living on <$5.50/day(4).
Latest Trends
When viewed on a shorter time-scale, from October, 2012 through July, 2019, apprehensions increased dramatically from February of 2017 through April, 2019, but have declined precipitously since then(5). On an annualized basis are still only a fifth of what they were in the late nineties.
Dramatic Increase in Asylum-Seekers
New asylum applications have climbed dramatically in the US since 2013, driven mostly by arrivals from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras as well as increases from Mexico and Venezuela(6). The total asylum caseload (pending + new applicants) has also climbed exponentially since then(6), meaning that the rate of asylum decisions has been overwhelmed by the number of applicants.
Why?
The largest number of asylum seekers in 2017 was from El Salvador, so I’ve used it as an example to investigate causative factors. There is no correlation between number of asylum seekers and the poverty rate, which has actually dropped by 50% since 2000(4). The murder rate skyrocketed from 2013 to 2015, but has since dropped back to lower levels, although still 11 times the US rate(4). So, there is some correlation between violence and the acceleration of massive emigration to the US seeking asylum.
What’s the Impact of this Surge on the Asylum Process in the US?
The number of negative asylum decisions by immigration officials in the US jumped dramatically from 2016 to 2017 but was very similar to the average from 2000 to 2008(6). The number and percentage of positive decisions in 2016-2017 was generally very similar to the average from 2008-2015(6).
Data Sources
1. 2017 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, Department of Homeland Security: https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2017
2. US Undocumented Immigrant Population Estimates, 1969-2016, ProCon.org, https://immigration.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000844
3. US Customs and Border Protection, Stats and Summaries: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/media-resources/stats
4. World Bank Open Data: https://data.worldbank.org
5. Refugees and Asylees, Annual Flow Report, Office of Immigration Statistics, US Dept Homeland Security: https://cis.org/sites/default/files/2018-03/Refugees_Asylees_2016_0.pdf
6. UN High Commission on Refugees, population statistics, asylum-seekers, refugee status determination: http://popstats.unhcr.org/en/asylum_seekers