Immigration to the United States from the countries of Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Iraq, Egypt and Pakistan is accelerating as the foreign-born population of the country continues its record climb.
The numbers from a new Center for Immigration Studies analysis of fresh census data show the number of U.S. residents who were born in those countries grew the most in recent years. Those growing populations of legal and illegal immigrants are not insubstantial pieces of a foreign-born population that now consists of 42.4 million people — the largest number ever recorded.
The number of people born in Saudi Arabia who are now living in the country grew a whopping 93 percent from 2010 to 2014, CIS found, nearly doubling in size from 43,000 residents to 87,000 residents. By comparison, the growth rate of the Polish immigrant population fell by 11 percent over that same period and the growth rate of the Mexican immigrant population flatlined.
Following Saudi Arabia are the foreign-born populations of Bangladesh, which grew by 37 percent, and Iraq, which grew by 36 percent over that same time period. Of the 217,000 Iraqi-born people living in the country, a whopping 160,000 of them arrived sometime between 2010 and 2014.
The Egyptian foreign-born population went up 25 percent in that time, followed closely by that of Pakistan, which grew by 24 percent. India and Ethiopia’s populations also grew by 24 percent.
Citizenship rates among these particular foreign-born populations vary widely. The vast majority of the foreign-born population from Saudi Arabia are not U.S. citizens, while more than 60 percent of those born in Pakistan and Egypt are citizens. Of those born in Bangladesh it’s about 50/50.
The total foreign-born population and their children accounted for 87 percent of the total growth of the U.S. population from 2010 to 2014, CIS found, adding 8.3 million new people to the country. The dramatic growth of the population, excluding their children, is illustrated in the CIS chart below.
The people living in the country who were born elsewhere are now 13.3 percent of the total population, the largest share in about 100 years. Nearly one in five U.S. residents will be an immigrant by 2060, largely due to legal immigration rather than illegal immigration, and by 2023 the foreign-born population is projected to exceed 51 million.
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