Immigrants: Main Drive for the US Population Growth By 2065

A new Pew Research Center report finds that the 1965 Immigration Act was largely responsible for bringing 59 million immigrants into the American population between then and 2015 (below, left).

In a major shift in immigration patterns over the next 50 years, Asians will have surged past Hispanics to become the largest group of immigrants heading to the United States, according to estimates in a new study of immigration patterns.

Today’s immigration debates focus mainly on the Hispanic population, which has quickly become America’s largest immigrant population.

Overall, the immigrant population will reach 78million by 2065, compared with 45million today, with a growth rate double that of the US-born population. The timely survey seems to remind American politicians that immigrants are already a significant part of their constituents. Today, with immigration policies no longer favoring Europeans, those figures are 62%, 12%, 18%, and 6%, respectively. The country’s previous high of 14.8% was set in 1890, when waves of Irish, Italian, Polish and other immigrants were coming to the USA. There were another 16 percent who thought that immigrants aren’t an important factor with little effect on society. Pew’s director of Hispanic research, Mark Hugo Lopez, said that in Mexico women are now having around two children, while in the 1960s and 1970s, they were having about seven children per woman on average. Hispanics will comprise 34 percent.

About 50 percent of those surveyed generally view immigrants as good for the country’s economy although they also believe that many of them are also engaged in illegal activities.

Pew researchers found that 20 percent of global immigrants would rather settle in the USA that elsewhere. As immigration from Mexico slowed significantly in the 2000s, Asians came to make up the largest group of new immigrants beginning around 2011, and projections indicate that will still be the case in 2065.

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson signed a piece of legislation that overhauled the country’s immigration system, setting in motion demographic shifts that have made America much more diverse. The foreign-born population represents a growing share of the electorate that Democrats and Republicans court because that voting bloc is big enough to tip presidential elections.

Immigrants have a profound effect on the demography of the United States.

At present, 47 percent of immigrants in the United States are Hispanic, whose number will drop to 31 percent by 2065. But Asian population will continue to grow and hit 38 percent of new immigrants in the U.S.by that time. The USA population will probably include 46% whites, 24% Hispanics, 14% Asians, and 13% African Americans, Pew reports. “Meanwhile, half of Americans say the impact of immigrants from Africa has been neither positive nor negative”, the report stated.

Americans also said immigrants are likely to make the United States better, with 45 per cent agreeing with that statement and 37 per cent saying they make the country worse.