Foreign-Born Population Hits 49.5M Under Biden – Largest Ever in U.S. History

Foreign-Born Population Hits 49.5M Under Biden – Largest Ever in U.S. History

November 30, 2023 by John Binder

The nation’s foreign-born population has hit an unprecedented 49.5 million, the largest ever recorded in American history, under President Joe Biden.

Analysis by Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) revealed that in October the foreign-born population reached almost 50 million, increasing by 4.5 million foreign-born residents since Biden took office in January 2021.

Put another way, the Biden administration has added more immigrants to the nation’s population than the annual number of U.S. births in fewer than three years. Similarly, the growth of the foreign-born population under Biden exceeds the resident populations of 25 states.

“At 15 percent, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population is also the highest ever recorded in American history,” Camarota and Zeigler wrote:

As the debate rages over the ongoing border crisis, this finding is important because administrative numbers such as border encounters or even legal immigrant arrivals do not measure the actual size of the immigrant population, which is what ultimately determines immigration’s impact on the country. [Emphasis added]

Chart via Center for Immigration Studies

In numbers even excessive for a liberal White House, Biden has doubled the monthly inflow of immigration. Under former President Barack Obama, for example, the foreign-born population grew by about 68,000 every month and under former President Donald Trump it grew by about 42,000 a month.

Biden, on the other hand, has grown the foreign-born population by a whopping 137,000 every month since taking office. More than half — about 2.5 million — of those arriving under Biden, the CIS researchers note, are illegal aliens with the remaining two million arriving as legal immigrants.

More than 6-in-10 foreign-born residents who have arrived since Biden became president are from Latin America while others are primarily from Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East.

Though much attention is given to illegal immigration, the nation’s policy of annually importing more than a million legal immigrants accounts for 75 percent of the total foreign-born population today.

Without reductions to legal immigration levels, the foreign-born population is expected to hit 70 million by 2060.

American voters continuously tell pollsters they want cuts to overall immigration, mostly legal immigration. The latest survey from Rasmussen Reports showed 56 percent of likely voters want legal immigration levels cut to at least 750,000 admissions a year — including a plurality who said they want to see fewer than 500,000 admissions a year.

Likewise, 62 percent of likely voters said they oppose current immigration law which allows for so-called “chain migration,” the process where newly naturalized citizens can sponsor an unlimited number of foreign relatives for green cards.

Most relevant to the CIS analysis, nearly 7-in-10 likely voters said they want immigration-driven population growth either slowed or halted altogether so that the U.S. population can stabilize at a comfortable rate.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News.

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