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< The immigrant population in the U.S. is climbing again, setting a record last year

The immigrant population in the U.S. is climbing again, setting a record last year

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A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

The number of immigrants in the United States is climbing again. That growth had slowed sharply in recent years, but the foreign-born population jumped to a new record last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. NPR's Joel Rose covers immigration. Joel, OK, so new record. Why is that number important?

JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Yeah. So these are brand-new numbers, new Census Bureau estimates for 2022 that were released today, showing that the foreign-born population set a new record last year, more than 46 million people. That's nearly a million more than the prior year. Not a huge shift in a country as large as the U.S., but it is a big deal because the growth of the immigrant population had slowed, as you said, dramatically over the last five years or so. And now that number is clearly growing again. Immigrants make up nearly 14% of people in the U.S.

MARTÍNEZ: OK, so where are they going in the U.S.?

ROSE: All over the place. Some states saw a very big jump in these estimates. Florida added more than 200,000 immigrants last year. Georgia and Maryland also saw, you know, healthy, large growth. And some states saw big percentage increases, even though they don't have big immigrant populations to begin with - for example, Iowa. Gabriela Rivera has lived there since 1988. She says the family chose Iowa because her mother had relatives there. And Rivera says she often hears the same story now from newer arrivals.

GABRIELA RIVERA: I think, for a lot, it's just the fact that they already have a support system. I know of other immigrants that would have come here from another state in the south - Texas, California, New Mexico, somewhere - because somebody in Iowa was already here and told them to come.

ROSE: Rivera says she knows a lot more doctors and lawyers and teachers now who are immigrants. And it's easier to get things that used to be hard to find in Iowa, for example, cactus leaves, which are one of her favorite foods from Mexico.

MARTÍNEZ: Any clues as to why the numbers are climbing?

ROSE: Yeah, probably several things going on at once. Legal immigration in the U.S. slowed way down during the Trump administration and then basically ground to a standstill during the pandemic. The Biden administration has opened the country's doors to tens of thousands of immigrants from Afghanistan and Ukraine. And there is also a record-setting influx of migrants from Central and South America at the U.S.-Mexico border. I talked to Jeffrey Passel. He is a demographer at the Pew Research Center in Washington. He said it's likely that all of these things are factors.

JEFFREY PASSEL: The immigration system is functioning a little better. We're letting people in. We didn't let many people in for a while, so that's part of it. Some of it is people we've admitted, and some of it is people we haven't admitted.

MARTÍNEZ: Now, Joel, immigration is always a touchy issue in Washington, so how do you think these numbers are going to be received?

ROSE: I think that's totally going to depend on which side of the debate you're on. Immigration hard-liners will likely see this as more evidence that immigration is out of control and will argue that these new arrivals are straining resources in communities where they are landing in big numbers, New York City being one big example. Immigrant advocates, on the other hand, are going to emphasize that immigrants help the U.S. economy grow and that they're filling jobs across the nation. And advocates will probably see this renewed population growth as a good thing for the country.

MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's NPR's Joel Rose. Joel, thanks a lot.

ROSE: You bet.

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