Key Takeaways on US Immigration: Past, Present and Future

In the 50 years since Congress broadly reconfigured immigration to open the country to newcomers from around the world, 59 million foreign-born people have come to the United States, more than quadrupling the number of immigrants who were in the country in 1965 and bringing their share of the population close to the peak of another great influx a century ago, according to a report published Monday by the Pew Research Center.

The report says the actual tipping point for the major shift in immigration patterns comes in 2055, though the study looks in detail at what will happen by 2065.

If current trends continue, in the next 50 years the US will be host to 78 million immigrants and immigrants and their decedents are projected to account for 88 percent of the USA population increase, or 103 million people.

Today, immigrants make up 14 percent of the population.

However, 55 percent of Democrats believe that – over the long term – the United States will be a better society thanks to immigrants. Already, Asian Americans make up about 6 percent of the nation’s population, up from just 1 percent in 1965.

Pew analyzed a combination of Census Bureau information and its own data.

As is apparent in the time-lapse map above, as well as in Pew’s interactive map found here, in the decades since the 1965 immigration reform, Mexico – as well as a smattering of Asian countries – widely replaced European countries as the origin of immigrants to the U.S.

Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of Hispanic research at Pew explained that the shift is partly due to the fertility rate of Hispanic women in Mexico and Latin America. “It became more hard to cross the border and to demographic changes in Mexico with fewer young people wanting to head north”. “At the same time we’ve seen a growing number of immigrants particularly from China or India who are coming for reasons such as pursuing a college degree or coming here to work temporarily in the high-tech sector”.

The Pew report said that by 2065, Hispanics will still remain a large share of the USA population at 24 percent, up from 18 percent in 2015, while Asian immigrants will make up 14 percent of the overall United States population, up from six percent now. Maine is about 95 percent non-Hispanic whites, with the nation’s oldest median age of 43.5 years old.

America’s changing demographics will neverbe returned to the place in which white Americans will maintain a comfortable numerical majority not viaany kind of immigration reform nor any brand of mass deportation. Eighteen said they don’t have much of an effect one way or the other. The company conducted the survey online from March 10 until April 6 this year, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percent.