Foreign-born percentage of US population reaches record high – think tank

15% of people living in the country were not born there, which could increase to 17.3% if Biden is reelected, the report said

The percentage of Americans born outside the country has reached an all-time high of 15%, immigration-focused think tank the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) revealed on Thursday. The conservative group’s report cited US Census Bureau data collected last month showing that 49.5 million US residents were foreign-born – an all-time record.

The foreign-born population of the US has increased by 4.5 million since President Joe Biden took office in 2021, a number that the think tank noted is larger than the population of 25 US states. More than half of that increase was estimated to consist of illegal immigrants by CIS.

Biden has presided over an unprecedented surge in immigration, both illegal and legitimate, with the foreign-born population growing by 137,000 per month since his inauguration, the data shows. Under former President Donald Trump, 42,000 foreigners entered the US every month prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, while his predecessor Barack Obama saw 68,000 immigrate monthly.

The percentage of Americans born outside the US in 2023 is three times what it was in 1970 and the actual number has increased fivefold, census data reveals. This level exceeds even the foreign-born population recorded from 1890 to 1910, when immigrants were flocking to the country to settle the frontier and claim their share of the American dream. Those years’ censuses saw immigrant populations approach – but not quite reach – the 15% figure, topping out at 14.8% and 14.7%, respectively.

Read more

The last three years have so altered the country's demographic composition that current Census Bureau population projections are obsolete. It had calculated that the US population would not reach 15% foreign-born until 2033. The CIS report blamed what it called Biden’s lax border enforcement policies for the unprecedented surge in largely illegal immigration, and warned that if the Democrat is reelected and current trends continue, 58.9 million immigrants will call the US home by December 2028, comprising a never-before-seen 17.3% of the US population and irrevocably changing the nation's character.

The majority of recent arrivals – 63% – come from Latin America, according to the think tank’s analysis, with Central America alone accounting for 21% of the growth. Latin Americans comprised 53.5% of the total immigrant population of the US as of November 2023. Sub-Saharan Africa came in a distant second as a region of origin, accounting for just 11% of the new arrivals, while East Asia claimed 10%. 

US Customs and Border Protection reported a record 2.47 million encounters with illegal aliens at the Mexican border this year, on top of 240,000 Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan nationals who entered legally under President Biden’s parole system and another 43,000 migrants who used the agency’s phone app to apply for asylum.