According to a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the U.S. immigrant population has hit a record-high 42.4 million — with a growth rate of 2.4 million legals and illegals both since 2010, including more than a million new arrivals in 2014 alone:
The dramatic increases in immigration are evident in both absolute numbers of the foreign born and as a share of the U.S. population. “Immigrants (legal and illegal) comprised 13.3 percent or about one out of eight U.S. residents in 2014, the highest percentage in 104 years,” the report notes. And the growth in the immigrant population is accelerating rapidly, from an increase of a half million immigrants per year between 2010 and 2012 to over a million from 2013 to 2014.
The immigrant share of the population has more than doubled from what it was in 1980, when illegal and legal immigrants together made up just 6.2 percent of the country.
Additionally, when the 16.2 million U.S.-born children of immigrant parents are included, one in six U.S. residents is an immigrant or the child of an immigrant – a total of 58.6 million people in 2014.
Immigrant flows from Sub-Saharan African, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries saw the largest relative growth. Flows from predominately Muslim countries grew at a rate of 19 percent from 2010 to 2014, including a whopping 93 percent increase in immigrants from Saudi Arabia.
