Lopez, Mark Hugo. “Lesson 2 📚 : Legal Immigrants.” Mini-Course, Pew Research Center, 31 July 2019, us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=434f5d1199912232d416897e4&id=6c7dde03e3&e=ffca89b29f. Lopez, Mark Hugo. “Lesson 3 📚 : Unauthorized Immigrants.” Mini-Course, Pew Research Center, 31 July 2019, us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=434f5d1199912232d416897e4&id=b106d8928e.
U.S. IMMIGRATION — LESSON 2 |
There are 35.2 million legal immigrants living in the United States today, making up three-quarters of the foreign-born population. More than half are naturalized citizens (immigrants granted U.S. citizenship). Most of the rest were admitted to the U.S. with a visa or other permission and later acquired legal permanent residency status, also known as a green card. A smaller number of legal immigrants are in the U.S. on temporary visas.
From what i know it’s hard to get a citizenship. For example, my sister when she tried to get her citizenship, she wasn’t able to, but she got a social security card and something else because she is in a program. A couple of months ago she told me that this program no longer exists. She is 21 and she isn’t able to go to college.
Fully 21 million legal immigrants are naturalized citizens, who have taken an oath swearing allegiance to the United States. Citizenship gives them the right to vote, protection from being deported and other legal rights.
Among immigrant adults who are eligible to become citizens, about two-thirds have done so, and the percentage has gone up in recent decades, though citizenship rates vary widely by birthplace. Only about four-in-ten eligible immigrants from Mexico are citizens, compared with eight-in-ten from the Middle East. In a Pew Research Center survey of Latino adults, lawful Mexican immigrants who had not applied for citizenship cited reasons including lack of English proficiency, limited interest in applying and the financial cost of the application.
To become citizens, immigrants must have first lived in the U.S. as legal permanent residents (or green card holders) for a certain amount of time (usually five years) and meet other requirements. About a million immigrants a year receive a green card that gives them permission to work, travel outside the U.S., receive some federal benefits and be eligible for citizenship. About half of the immigrants who receive green cards already were living in the U.S., often on temporary visas. Let’s look at the most common ways immigrants receive green cards.
Another 21% of green cards went to other relatives of U.S. citizens, and to immediate relatives of legal permanent residents. Annual quotas for these categories result in long waiting lists, sometimes of 20 years or more.
When it comes to foreign students, the U.S. has more in its colleges and universities than any other country.
There are 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States, according to the latest Pew Research Center estimate from 2017. Some crossed the U.S. border illegally, and others arrived on temporary legal visas but stayed past their deadlines.
To arrive at our estimate, we use U.S. Census Bureau data to establish the size of the total foreign-born population, subtract the number of lawful immigrants, and then use the remainder to estimate the size and characteristics of the unauthorized immigrant population.
About two-thirds of unauthorized immigrant adults have lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years, and that share has grown over time. A smaller percentage, compared with a decade ago, has been in the country for five years or less.
About six-in-ten unauthorized immigrants live in 20 major metro areas – with the biggest populations in New York, Los Angeles and Houston. These areas also have large legal immigrant populations. By contrast, a little more than a third of the overall U.S. population lives in these areas.
Most unauthorized immigrants live in just six states: California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. Again, these are top states for legal immigrants too, but only about 40% of the total U.S. population lives there.
That number (which is nearly 5% of the total U.S. workforce ) has declined from a decade earlier. The employment patterns of unauthorized immigrants are different from those of legal ones or of workers born in the U.S.
Unauthorized immigrant workers make up a higher share of some occupations – especially farming and construction – than they do the total workforce. But in all major occupational categories, U.S.-born workers are a majority.
Most of these children (5.0 million) were born in the U.S. and are U.S. citizens, while nearly 700,000 are unauthorized immigrants themselves. Children of unauthorized immigrants make up nearly 8% of the nation’s K-12 students.
While the number of U.S.-born children of unauthorized immigrants had been rising for decades, in recent years, the number of births to unauthorized immigrant mothers has declined.
The number of people caught at the U.S.-Mexico border while trying to cross illegally – one measure of unauthorized immigration trends – generally rises and falls from month to month, according to government statistics. However, the number of apprehensions has increased since 2017, after declining for the past decade.
One notable change is that Mexicans no longer accounted for the majority of border apprehensions in some recent fiscal years. In fact, from 2009 to 2014, more Mexican immigrants (both lawful and unauthorized) returned to their home country from the U.S. than migrated to the U.S.
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