Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees - GCIR

With support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Foundation for Child Development, this page compiles numerous resources on children of immigrants, who make up about 20 percent of all children in the United States. [source] A wide range of information, from statistics to model programs, is available below.

The global migration phenomenon shows no signs of abating. An estimated 185 to 192 million people live outside their countries of birth, up from 82 million in 1970. The quest for improved economic prospects drives migration. Demographic imbalances also play a role. While the developed world's populations are shrinking and their average age is rising, the developing world is still young, and its population is growing. Meanwhile internal conflicts and persecution based on ethnic, religious, or social grounds create millions of refugees.

National

• Fast Facts - Fast Facts on U.S. immigration statistics includes a variety of topics including immigrant growth rates, the top ten immigrant-sending countries, and the primary sources of undocumented immigrants.
• MPI - The Migration Policy Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank. Their fact sheets include demographic & social, language & education, workforce, and income & poverty data of the foreign-born population.

International

The Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, endeavors to effectively study local, national, and international policies that affect the movement of people. The MPI website effectively organizes the wealth of information it contains for ease of access. Using Census 2000 data, the links below indicate the distribution of various groups of immigrants by country, including the total foreign-born population and the five largest foreign-born groups.

• Foreign-born population (total)
• Foreign-born from Mexico
• Foreign-born from the Philippines

Refugees (individuals who apply for admission to the United States at an overseas facility) and asylees (individuals who apply for admission once they are within this nation’s borders or at a point of entry) seek refuge in America due to fear of persecution in their homeland. This web page provides a basic overview and resources on this foreign-born population.

English acquisition rates are high among immigrants who come to the United States as children and rise across the generations.^[source]

• Almost 80 percent of first-generation (foreign-born) children from Mexico and 88 percent from China speak English "well" or "very well."
• Among the second generation, 92 percent of Latinos and 96 percent of Asians are English proficient and many are bilingual in their mother tongue (85 percent of second-generation Latinos and 61 percent of second-generation Asians).
• By the third generation, 72 percent of Latinos and 92 percent of Asians speak English only.

Children of immigrants are one in five school-age children.^[source]

• From 1970 to 2000, children of immigrants increased from 6 percent to 19 percent of all school-age children, constituting 11 million of 58 million total U.S. children. About 75 percent of the children of immigrants are U.S. citizens.
• In 2000, 16 percent of all students in pre-kindergarten were children of immigrants, but only 2 percent were foreign-born. In the upper grades (6 to 12), children of immigrants were 19 percent of the total student population, while the foreign-born were 7 percent of the total.

Immigration Policy Center

The information below is from GCIR's Immigrant Integration Toolkit which includes general facts about immigrants in the U.S. economy supported by historical empirical data and developing trends in the economy.

Immigrants are a significant, increasing percentage of the U.S. labor force growth.^[source]

• Immigrants constituted more than 50 percent of the overall growth in the labor force in the last decade.
• Between 1994 and 2004, the native-born labor force grew by 7 percent (118 million to 126 million), while the immigrant labor force grew by 66 percent (12.9 million to 21.4 million).
• Between 2000 and 2050, new immigrants and their children will account for 83 percent of the growth in the working-age population and 60 percent of total U.S. population growth.

Immigrants with legal status make up 70 percent of the U.S. foreign-born population.^[source]

Demographers estimate that in 2005:^[source]

• Legal permanent residents were 32 percent of the foreign-born (11.8 million, including 1.3 million who arrived as refugees).
• Naturalized citizens were 35 percent (12.8 million, including 1.3 million who arrived as refugees).
• Temporary legal residents (such as students and temporary workers) were 3 percent (1.3 million).
• Unauthorized migrants were 30 percent (11.1 million).

Immigrant numbers and growth rates are significant.^[source]

• The foreign-born population in the United States tripled in the past four decades and currently totals about 37 million, or nearly 12 percent of the total population.
• By 2010, the foreign-born population is expected to increase to 43 million, or 13.5 percent of the total population.