Posts Tagged: foreign
Is 'Spanglish' The Right Way to Reach the U.S. Hispanic B2B Market? Maybe Not.
This is a very important question that each business must answer in order to reach the highly sought-after B2B market. The answer is more complicated than you think.
Nuanced Expectations for B2B Customers
Because Hispanic millennials in the U.S. use both English and Spanish, marketers often recommend using Spanglish to reach them. However, this marketing is often targeted to retail consumers, not business buyers, and B2B communication is vastly different.
Companies are still experimenting with different strategies to reach Hispanic businesses in the B2B marketplace, but there is one lesson they have already learned: Hispanic business owners value professionalism just as much as any other business owner. That means that Spanglish, a very laid back and informal mashup of languages, may be inappropriate when communicating with B2B customers.
Your translated content needs to educate B2B customers on how your products and services can help them and how you can provide what they need, and it needs to do so clearly and succinctly. Casual language, especially hybrid lingo like Spanglish, can compromise the authenticity, integrity and trust that's so important to a B2B buyer.
Should Spanglish Ever Be Used in B2B Marketing?
There are times when a more casual tone can work in business marketing, but the important thing is to discern carefully when it's useful and appropriate.
If you have products or services that are targeted to young Hispanics — specifically millennials who grew up entirely in the United States — then Spanglish may be an approachable way to communicate with these audiences. Similarly, if you know that some of your users already strongly prefer Spanglish, you should continue to communicate with them in this way.
However, there are two important downsides to consider when using Spanglish for the B2B market:
1. Hispanics who were educated outside the U.S. may not be as adept at speaking Spanglish as those who were brought up there.
2. People whose first language is Spanish may not feel comfortable speaking Spanglish, so marketing in Spanglish can cause an immediate disconnect with these buyers. In fact, 34.2% of the U.S. Hispanic population is foreign-born, according to data from the most recent U.S. Census. That means Spanish is likely their first and most-preferred language.
Understanding Your B2B Customers and Their Language Preferences
Before you decide how to market to Hispanic B2B customers, you first need to understand who they are and how they prefer to communicate.
For the most part, decisions at Hispanic-owned companies aren't made by a single person; instead, they're often made by a team of people who speak varying combinations of English, Spanish, or Spanglish. Many of these decision-makers are upper-level managers who tend to be older and more conservative who view Spanglish as too relaxed for the workplace.
Providing information in both English and Spanish is a safe, professional approach that can ensure your content reaches every customer, no matter their preferred language. And you'll never have to wonder whether a too-casual Spanglish experience is turning off prospects and customers.
Source: Published originally on mediapost.com, Is 'Spanglish' The Right Way To Reach The U.S. Hispanic B2B Market? Maybe Not, by Craig Witt, May 3rd, 2018.
Immigration projected to drive growth in U.S. working-age population through at least 2035
The number of adults in the prime working ages of 25 to 64 – 173.2 million in 2015 – will rise to 183.2 million in 2035, according to Pew Research Center projections. That total growth of 10 million over two decades will be lower than the total in any single decade since the Baby Boomers began pouring into the workforce in the 1960s. The growth rate of working-age adults will also be markedly reduced.
The largest segment of working-age adults – those born in the U.S. whose parents also were born in the U.S. – is projected to decline from 2015 to 2035, both in numbers and as a share of the working-age population. The Center's projections show a reduction of 8.2 million of these adults, from 128.3 million in 2015 to 120.1 million in 2035.
That numerical loss will be partially offset by an increase in the number of working-age U.S.-born adults with immigrant parents, who are projected to number 24.6 million in 2035, up from 11.1 million in 2015. But perhaps the most important component of the growth in the working-age population over the next two decades will be the arrival of future immigrants. The number of working-age immigrants is projected to increase from 33.9 million in 2015 to 38.5 million by 2035, with new immigrant arrivals accounting for all of that gain. (The number of current immigrants of working age is projected to decline as some will turn 65, while others are projected to leave the country or die.) Without these new arrivals, the number of immigrants of working age would decline by 17.6 million by 2035, as would the total projected U.S. working-age population, which would fall to 165.6 million.
The Pew Research Center projections for foreign-born working-age adults are based on current rates of immigration, combining lawful and unauthorized. They assume that two-thirds of immigrants arriving through 2035 will be ages 25 to 64, as is true of today's new immigrants. The declining number of U.S.-born working-age adults with U.S.-born parents means that they will become a smaller share of the working-age population: 66% in 2035, compared with 74% in 2015. U.S.-born children of immigrants will make up a growing share of working-age adults: 13% in 2035, compared with 6% in 2015. The immigrant share of working-age adults will inch up, from 20% in 2015 to 21% in 2035.
The decrease in working-age adults born in the U.S. whose parents also were born in the U.S. largely reflects the aging of the Baby Boom generation, born from 1946 to 1964. The youngest Boomers turn 65 by 2030 (of course, some Baby Boomers are immigrants or have immigrant parents, but the share is smaller than among younger Americans). Birth rates, which have stayed relatively low since the 1970s, also play a role.
The largest group joining the nation's working-age population will be the 60 million people who were born in the country to U.S.-born parents and turn 25 between 2015 and 2035. But they will be outnumbered by U.S.-born adults with U.S.-born parents who turn 65 or who die, according to the projections, and so this group will have a net loss in number.
There will also be 18 million U.S.-born people with immigrant parents who will join the working-age population from 2015 to 2035. This group already lives in the U.S.; they were ages 5 to 24 in 2015. They will outnumber the working-age adults in this group who turn 65 or die over the next two decades, resulting in a net gain of 13.6 million working-age adults who are U.S. born with immigrant parents.
The projections indicate that 17.6 million new immigrants will be added to the working-age population by 2035, offsetting the aging or death of other working-age immigrants. Without them, the number of working-age immigrants would decline by 2035 and the total U.S. working-age population would drop by almost 8 million (or more than 4%) from the 2015 working-age population.
Growth rates and immigration's role
The relatively weak growth rate projected for the total working-age adult population – averaging 0.3% per year for both the decades between 2015 and 2035 – is well under the increases in recent decades. The annual growth peaked at 2% in the decade from 1975 to 1985, when the Baby Boomers were coming of age, and growth rates were at least 0.8% in all other decades since 1965.
These projections, which are based on analysis of census data trends, focus on the working-age population, defined as ages 25 to 64. They exclude young adults, many of whom are enrolled in training programs or higher education, as well as adults ages 65 and older, most of whom are not working. However, the patterns are similar if the age range includes those as young as 18 or as old as 69.
These projections do not look at the future labor force – that is, how many people in each of these groups will be employed or looking for work. Labor-force participation differs by gender and generation. Currently, foreign-born men are somewhat more likely to work than all U.S.-born men (including those with immigrant parents and U.S.-born parents), but foreign-born women are somewhat less likely to work than U.S.-born women, in part because many are staying home to raise children.
Immigrants also play a large role in future U.S. population growth. Assuming current trends continue, future immigrants and their U.S.-born children will account for 88% of the nation's population growth between 2015 and 2065, according to Pew Research Center projections.
Source: Published originally on PewResearchCenter Immigration projected to drive growth in U.S. working-age population through at least 2035, by Jeffrey S. Passel and D'VeraCohn, March 7, 2017.
/span>U.S. still has a ways to go in meeting Obama’s goal of producing more college grads
Based on the conventional statistics used to gauge educational attainment, the nation has made some progress toward this 2020 goal during the Obama years. In March 2009, 41% of 25- to 34-year-olds had completed at least an associate degree. By March 2016, 48% of young adults had done so.
Still, as Obama's time in office nears its end, the U.S. remains 12 percentage points short of the goal. More progress will need to be made over the next four years than has been made over the past seven if the 2020 goal is to be reached.
The U.S. also has a ways to go if it is to reach Obama's stated goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. As of 2015, the nation ranked 10th among the 35 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in college attainment, up from 15th in 2009. In 2015, 47% of U.S. 25- to 34-year-olds had at least an associate degree, exceeding the OECD average of 42%. But the U.S. still trailed nations like Korea, Japan and Canada by more than 10 percentage points.
Men, women and all major racial and ethnic groups have made gains in college completion during Obama's tenure. The magnitude of these increases varies between groups, however.
Asian Americans are the only major group to have met the 2020 goal, though they had already done so before Obama came into office. In 2016, 71% of Asian young adults had completed college, up from 67% in 2009.
As of 2016, 55% of white 25- to 34-year-olds had attained at least an associate degree, compared with 35% of blacks and 26% of Hispanics.
While young Hispanics are furthest from the 2020 goal, there are large gaps between U.S.-born and foreign-born Hispanics. U.S.-born Hispanics are twice as likely as their foreign-born counterparts to have completed at least an associate degree (34% vs. 17%). In fact, the attainment rate of young U.S.-born Hispanics is on par with that of young blacks (35%). It's important to note that many young foreign-born Hispanics have recently arrived in the U.S. from countries with lower average levels of education than the U.S.
Conversely, young foreign-born Asians are more likely than their U.S.-born counterparts to have completed at least an associate degree. This is largely due to the fact that many of these young Asian immigrants hail from nations that have higher educational attainment levels than the U.S. overall.
Source: Published originally on PewResearchCenter U.S. still has a ways to go in meeting Obama's goal of producing more college grads, by Richard Fry, January 18, 2017.
Trump and U.S. immigration policy
President Donald Trump campaigned on seven major issues, two of which involved migration: have the United States build and Mexico pay for a wall on the 2,000-mile Mexico-U.S. border, and deport the country's 11 million unauthorized foreigners,* over half of whom are Mexican. He has also promised to reverse President Barack Obama's executive orders that provide temporary legal status to some unauthorized foreigners, and to "put American workers first" in migration policymaking.
Since winning the election, Trump has modified some of his positions, notably announcing that deportation efforts would be focused on 2 million unauthorized foreigners convicted of crimes in the United States.
Trump's focus on unauthorized migration during the campaign has had several effects that may prove long-lasting, including polarizing public opinion about what to do about immigration in general and unauthorized foreigners in particular. Migration may join abortion and guns on the list of issues that deeply divide Americans.
Unauthorized migration
Unauthorized foreigners account for a quarter of the 44 million foreign-born U.S. residents. The remainder includes 19 million naturalized U.S. citizens, 12 million lawful immigrants, and almost 2 million lawful temporary visitors such as students and guest workers (Brown and Stepler 2016).
The number of unauthorized foreigners rose rapidly from the 1990s through the mid-2000s, peaking at 12 million in 2007 before declining during and after the 2008-2009 recession (Passel and Cohn 2016a) (fig. 1). Some 8 million unauthorized foreigners are in the U.S. labor force (fig. 1), comprising 5% of a 160-million-strong national workforce that also includes 20 million lawful foreign-born workers (Passel and Cohn 2016b). In 2014, unauthorized workers accounted for 9% of California's workforce.
Between 2007 and 2014, the number of unauthorized U.S. residents who were born in Mexico fell by a million from 7 million to 6 million, indicating that departures have been exceeding arrivals. That shift is part of a larger trend of fewer new unauthorized foreigners: In 2014, 66% of unauthorized foreigners had been in the country for 10 years or longer, compared with 41% in 2005 (Passel and Cohn 2016a).
Agriculture has the highest share of unauthorized workers of any major industry. Based on data broken out by industry category, about 17% of those employed in agriculture were unauthorized in 2014, followed by 13% in construction and 9% in hospitality. According to data on occupation categories, 26% of those with farming occupations were unauthorized, followed by 15% in construction and 9% each in production and services. Dependence on unauthorized workers is high in certain areas for instance, unauthorized workers account for over 50% of fruit pickers in California.
There are two major policy approaches to deal with unauthorized migrants: enforcement-only, and comprehensive reforms. The latter generally involve three components: enforcement, a path to legalization, and guest worker provisions. Congress has considered multiple proposals of both types in the past decade, but none have become law.
In December 2005, the House of Representatives approved an enforcement-only bill, HR 4437, requiring all employers to verify, using a government database, the legal status of newly hired workers (within a week of hiring) as well as current workers (within 6 years of the bill becoming law). Suspected unauthorized workers would have been required to contact the government to correct their records or be fired. HR 4437 also called for penalties on those who supported or shielded unauthorized foreigners, and ordered the construction of 700 miles of fencing along the Mexico-US border.
Despite pressure from farmers and other employers who hire large numbers of unauthorized workers, HR 4437 did not include new or expanded guest worker programs. It prompted strong reactions from Mexico and outcry in many U.S. cities, including the "A Day Without Immigrants" protests on May 1, 2006. Ultimately, the Senate did not pass the bill.
In May 2006, the Senate introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill, S 2611. The enforcement provisions in S 2611 were similar to those in HR 4427, with the addition of a system of appeals and reimbursement in cases of government error in the verification process.
S 2611 took a tiered approach to legalization, dividing unauthorized foreigners into three groups based on their length of time in the United States. Under the bill, unauthorized foreigners who had been in the country for at least 5 years (estimated at 7 million people) could become "probationary immigrants" by meeting certain conditions, and would be eligible for regular immigrant visas after 6 more years of U.S. work and tax payments (Migration News 2006). Unauthorized foreigners in the country for between 2 and 5 years (roughly 3 million people) could receive a 3-year temporary lawful work status, but they would be required to return to their countries of origin within 3 years and re-enter the US legally a so-called touchback requirement. Unauthorized foreigners in the country for fewer than 2 years would be required to leave.
S 2611 also provided for a new large-scale H-2C guest worker program. Employers in any U.S. industry could "attest" that they need to hire migrants, and a foreigner outside the United States with a job offer from such an employer could have paid $500 and obtained a 6-year work permit. Guest workers could change jobs if they received an offer from another employer that had completed the attestation process.
President George W. Bush supported S 2611, but House Republicans did not support the legalization provisions, and the bill died. A similar comprehensive bill, S 1348, was introduced in 2007. Although it included "trigger" provisions, meaning that stepped-up enforcement would have to be deemed effective before new guest worker or legalization programs could begin, it did not pass the Senate.
Obama to Trump
After his 2008 election, Obama said that immigration was not a first-term issue, and instead tackled the economic recession in 2009 and health care in 2010. However, during his first term, Obama met with migrant rights groups frequently and urged them to persuade Congress to act on comprehensive immigration reforms (Migration News 2009). Immigration reform also featured in his 2010 State of the Union speech.
Midterm elections in November 2010 increased the clout of Republicans in Congress, changing the conversation from comprehensive to piecemeal immigration reform. Piecemeal reform meant reviving efforts to pass measures that had bipartisan support, including the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act (introduced several times, first in 2001), which provided a path to citizenship for unauthorized foreigners brought to the United States as children; and the Agricultural Job Opportunity Benefits and Security Act (AgJOBS, originally introduced in 2003) to legalize unauthorized farm workers and make it easier to hire guest workers. Both measures had been blocked in the Democrat-controlled Congress by proponents of comprehensive immigration reform who feared that dealing with the "easy" aspects of immigration reform would become a substitute for comprehensive action.
While campaigning for re-election in June 2012, President Obama created by executive order the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has so far granted 2-year work and residence permits to 741,000 unauthorized foreigners who arrived in the United States before age 16, are between the ages of 16 and 30, lived illegally in the United States at least 5 years, and have a high school diploma or are honorably discharged veterans.
Many hoped that Obama's re-election in 2012 would encourage Congress to approve comprehensive immigration reform. A bipartisan group of eight senators introduced S 744, an immigration reform bill that increased border and interior enforcement, created a 13-year path to U.S. citizenship for most unauthorized foreigners, and revised and expanded guest worker programs. The Senate approved S 744 by a 68-32 vote in June 2013, but House leaders said they preferred an incremental or piecemeal approach to immigration policymaking, and did not act (Migration News 2013).
With no comprehensive immigration package attracting majority support in Congress, President Obama expanded DACA after the November 2014 elections and proposed the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) program, which would have given temporary legal status to unauthorized foreigners whose children were legal residents. Half of the states sued to block DAPA, and it was not implemented (Rural Migration News 2016).
Unknowns under Trump
During his campaign, President Trump pledged to deport unauthorized foreigners, so it can be expected that he will step up enforcement at the border and move aggressively to remove foreigners convicted of crimes. What is not yet clear is how fast an increase in enforcement could be implemented for instance, such measures may require congressional funding appropriations.
Much of the debate about enforcement inside U.S. borders is likely to involve relationships between federal, state and local governments to identify unauthorized foreigners.
Under the Secure Communities policy that began in 2008, state and local police shared the fingerprints of all persons arrested with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS). If suspected unauthorized foreigners were detected, DHS could ask state and local police to hold the person until DHS agents arrived.
Secure Communities was ended in 2014 by the Obama Administration amidst complaints from migrant communities that "innocent activities," such as being stopped at a DUI checkpoint while driving to go shopping, could result in deportation. Many states and cities went further, declaring themselves to be "sanctuaries" and ordering their law enforcement agencies not to cooperate with DHS.
Trump has promised to withhold federal funds from sanctuary states and cities, but since his election, some cities have approved resolutions pledging not to cooperate with DHS enforcement efforts even if the result is less federal money.
One area where Trump can act quickly is refugee policy. The president, in consultation with Congress, determines the number of refugees to be resettled in the United States each year, and admitted 85,000 in the 2016 fiscal year. Obama proposed to admit 110,000 refugees in fiscal year 2017, but Trump could reduce or stop refugee admissions.
There are many other migration issues that Trump could tackle administratively. For example, Trump could order DHS to resume the workplace raids in meatpacking and other sectors thought to employ large numbers of unauthorized foreigners, or increase the number of audits of the I-9 forms completed by employers and newly hired workers, which could disrupt sectors that hire large numbers of unauthorized workers, such as agriculture. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) laid out 79 actions that the president could take administratively, including closer examination of those seeking student, investor and guest worker visas (CIS 2016).
Some administrative actions that President Trump could take are likely to be controversial. He has promised to rescind some of the executive orders issued by Obama, including the one that created DACA. Many have called on Trump to abstain from fulfilling this pledge, emphasizing that the 741,000 DACA youth have been screened and many are now working lawfully. Trump may allow current temporary DACA status to expire rather than to use the information provided by DACA recipients to target them for removal.
Trump's migration agenda is likely to interact with other agendas, including trade. The number-one source of migrants, Mexico, is also the third largest U.S. trade partner, with two-way trade totaling $584 billion in 2015.
One reason for the upsurge in Mexico-U.S. trade is the North American Free Trade Agreement, a trade agreement that Trump has pledged to re-negotiate. Mexico's oil monopoly PEMEX faces declining production and is seeking foreign partners to invest in new oil fields. Since Trump wants to increase fossil fuel production, there could be a complex negotiation with Mexico involving migration, trade and energy. Similarly, with China the number two source of migrants and also a target of Trump's ire for running a trade surplus with the United States, there could be negotiations with China that link migration and economic issues.
Trump's election was a surprise, and there may be similar surprises about his migration policies. His campaign rhetoric changed the vocabulary of politics in many areas, including migration, but it is not yet clear if this changed rhetoric will also change migration policy. The United States is likely to remain the country with the world's largest immigrant population, but the fate of the 11 million unauthorized foreigners is uncertain. The extremes of removing most of them at one end, and putting most on a path to U.S. citizenship at the other, are less likely than an in-between solution that gives most unauthorized foreigners some type of temporary legal status.
Source: Published originally on UC ANR California Ag, Trump and U.S. immigration policy, by Philip L. Martin, UC Davis. January 23, 2017.
Overall Number of U.S. Unauthorized Immigrants Holds Steady Since 2009
Among world regions, the number of unauthorized immigrants from Asia, Central America, and sub-Saharan Africa rose between 2009 and 2014. The number from Mexico has steadily declined since 2007, the first year of the Great Recession, but Mexicans remain more than half (52%) of U.S. unauthorized immigrants.
Across the United States, most states saw no statistically significant change in the size of their unauthorized immigrant populations from 2009 to 2014. In the seven states where the unauthorized immigrant population declined, falling numbers of unauthorized Mexican immigrants were the key factor. Meanwhile, among the six states that had increases in their unauthorized immigrant populations, only one – Louisiana – could trace this to a rise in the number of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico.
These are some of the key findings from the latest Pew Research Center estimates based mainly on U.S. Census Bureau data. Details concerning the source data and methods for calculating the estimates are available in the methodology.
The recent relative stability in the estimated size of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population is a contrast to previous periods. The number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. rose through the 1990s and early 2000s, peaking at 12.2 million in 2007. The number of unauthorized immigrants declined in 2008 and 2009.
As the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population has stabilized, it also has become more settled. In 2014, unauthorized immigrant adults had lived in the U.S. for a median of 13.6 years – meaning that half had been in the country at least that long. In 2005, the median had been eight years, before rising to 10 years in 2009, the year the recession ended.
Mexicans remain the majority of the nation's unauthorized immigrant population, but their estimated number – 5.8 million in 2014 – has declined by about half a million people since 2009. Meanwhile, the number of unauthorized immigrants from all other nations – especially those from Asia and Central America – grew by 325,000 since 2009, to 5.3 million in 2014. The decline in unauthorized immigrants from some parts of the world, mainly Mexico, was roughly balanced by an increase in unauthorized immigrants from other parts of the world, so the total U.S. unauthorized immigrant population had no statistically significant change from 2009 to 2014.
In contrast to the stable unauthorized immigrant total, the overall foreign-born population in the U.S. has gone up each year since 2009. The overall immigrant population rose by nearly 3 million from 2009 to 2014, reaching 43.6 million, even as its unauthorized immigrant component did not change.
As overall net immigration from Mexico declined, immigration from Asia did not flag – indeed, it increased somewhat. As a result, among all newly arriving immigrants to the U.S., more now come from Asia than from Latin America, a change since 2008.
After rising for decades, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. who are from Mexico began to decline from a peak of 6.9 million in 2007. Though the overall U.S. unauthorized immigrant population has stabilized since the recession ended in 2009, the total number from Mexico has continued to shrink and is now more than 1 million below its 2007 peak.
A notable change that has fueled the decline in the population of Mexican unauthorized immigrants is a decrease in the number of new arrivals. Before the Great Recession, the number of new arrivals from Mexico exceeded the number of Mexican unauthorized immigrants who left the U.S. The decrease in the Mexican unauthorized immigrant population since 2009 indicates that departures have exceeded arrivals.
At the national level, the rise in unauthorized immigrants from countries other than Mexico was driven mainly by an increase in those from Central America, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. The number of unauthorized immigrants born in India, for example, grew by about 130,000 from 2009 to 2014, to an estimated 500,000. Many unauthorized immigrants from these nations arrived with legal status and overstayed their visas, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said recently that his agency is “doubling down” on preventing immigrants from Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world from crossing illegally at the southwest border.
Recent arrivals a smaller share of U.S. unauthorized immigrants
Unauthorized immigrants increasingly are likely to have been in the U.S. for 10 years or more – 66% in 2014 compared with 41% in 2005. A declining share has lived in the U.S. for less than five years; only 14% had been in the U.S. for less than five years in 2014, compared with 31% in 2005.
This overall change has been fueled by the decline in new unauthorized immigrants, especially those from Mexico. Among Mexican unauthorized immigrants, fully 78% had lived in the U.S. for 10 years or more as of 2014, and only 7% had been in the U.S. for less than five years. Among unauthorized immigrants from nations other than Mexico, a smaller share, but still a majority – 52% – had lived in the U.S. for at least a decade in 2014. Compared with Mexicans, a higher share of unauthorized immigrants from elsewhere – 22% – had been in the U.S. for less than five years.
Because of historic immigration patterns between the U.S. and Mexico, unauthorized immigrants are more likely to be long-term residents in Western states. In California, home to the largest unauthorized immigrant population in the U.S., the median length of U.S. residence is 15.6 years, meaning that at least half have lived in the U.S. since the late 1990s. Some 71% of unauthorized immigrants in California are of Mexican origin.
Unauthorized immigrant populations changed in 13 states from 2009 to 2014. In five of the six where populations rose, the change was due to an increase in unauthorized immigrants from countries other than Mexico. In all seven states where populations declined, it was due to a decline in the number of Mexican unauthorized immigrants.
The overall estimated population of unauthorized immigrants went up in six states from 2009 to 2014. In five of them, the increase was due to the number of unauthorized immigrants from countries other than Mexico rising as the number of Mexican unauthorized immigrants either stayed the same (Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington) or declined (New Jersey). Only one state – Louisiana – saw an increase in its unauthorized immigrant population driven by an increase in Mexicans. In that state, the number of unauthorized immigrants from other countries did not change from 2009 to 2014.
The estimated population of unauthorized immigrants went down in seven states from 2009 to 2014 because of declines in the number from Mexico. In six of those states – California, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Nevada and South Carolina – the estimated number of unauthorized immigrants from countries other than Mexico did not change. In the remaining state – Alabama – the total from other countries rose from 2009 to 2014, but the number from Mexico decreased more.
In 2014, 59% of unauthorized immigrants lived in the same six states that have housed the majority of unauthorized immigrants for decades. California, with 2.3 million, has by far the largest number, followed by Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. The unauthorized immigrant population had become much more dispersed around the country as numbers increased in nontraditional settlement areas. In 1990, 80% of unauthorized immigrants lived in the top six states; by 2005, the share had fallen to roughly the current level, 61%.
Unauthorized immigrants accounted for 3.5% of the overall population and 26% of the nation's 43.6 million foreign-born residents in 2014. The U.S. foreign-born population also included 19 million naturalized citizens, 11.7 million lawful permanent residents and 1.7 million lawful residents with temporary status (such as students, diplomats and so-called “guest workers” in the technology sector). In total, immigrants represented 13.6% of the U.S. population in 2014.
The issue of unauthorized immigration has played a prominent role in the 2016 presidential campaign. For more on the nation's view of immigrants and immigration policy, see Pew Research Center surveys on this topic.
The unauthorized immigrant estimates in this report are produced using a multistage method that first subtracts the estimated U.S. lawful foreign-born population from the total adjusted foreign-born population to derive a residual estimate of the unauthorized immigrant population. Then, the residual estimates serve as control totals in assigning legal status to individual respondents in the survey. The main source of data for 1995-2004 is the March supplement of the Current Population Survey, and for 2005-2014 it is the American Community Survey; both are conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau; see Methodology for more details.
Source: Published originally on PewResearchCenter Overall Number of U.S. Unauthorized Immigrants Holds Steady Since 2009 , by Jeffrey S. Passel and D'Vera Cohn, September 20, 2016.