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Washington, D.C. (March 27, 2023) – A new analysis of Census Bureau data by the Center for Immigration Studies examines immigration’s impact on U.S. population growth over the last 20 years. The report finds that immigration accounts for an increasing share of population growth in recent years, primarily due to very high levels of immigration coupled with a decline in natural increase among U.S. residents.
Steven Camarota, the Center’s director of research and co-author of the report, said, “Legal and illegal immigration have added roughly 15 million people to the U.S. population in the last decade. This clearly has important implications for issues Americans care about, like the environment and congestion. The key question for policymakers and the public is whether this should be allowed to continue at this pace.”
Among the findings:
- Over the last two decades, immigration’s share of population growth has tended to increase.
- The net migration of immigrants (legal and illegal) plus births to immigrants once in the United States added 6.7 million to the U.S. population between 2016 and 2021.
- The 6.7 million immigrants added to the country between 2016 and 2021 was equal to three-fourths of the total increase in the population over this time period.
- Partly as a result of the ongoing border crisis between 2021 and 2022, net international migration by itself accounted for 80 percent of U.S. population growth, based on Census Bureau estimates.
- Immigration’s growing role in population growth is due to very high levels of immigration coupled with a decline in natural increase – births minus deaths among U.S. residents.
- The decline in natural increase is due in part to a long-term increase in mortality from “deaths of despair” (e.g. suicide and overdoses), rising obesity, and population aging. Covid, and its associated social disruptions, also caused a further steep rise in 2021 and 2022 of roughly 600,000 each year.
- The long-term decline in natural increase is also attributable to a significant falloff in births among both the U.S.-born and immigrants since the Great Recession in 2008. The U.S. has seemingly entered a period of lower fertility, at least for the foreseeable future.
- Births may rise somewhat in 2023 — they did some in 2022 — as uncertainty associated with Covid recedes. Deaths should also fall with the ending of the pandemic.
- Despite the expected upturn in natural increase, immigration will continue to drive U.S. population in the future absent a change in policy.
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