Immigrants

The immigrant population in the United States has burgeoned over the past few decades. From 1990 to 2006, the number of immigrants rose from 20 million to more than 37 million. Urban Institute immigration policy experts study how the foreign-born population is growing, integrating, and changing.

We have analyzed immigrants' contributions to the labor force and the economy, tracked fast-growing immigrant communities, studied the effect of No Child Left Behind on immigrant children and English Language Learners, and surveyed foreign-born households’ health, well-being, and economic mobility. Read more.

Featured Links

• Metrotrends: Immigration and Employment

  Contact an expert on Immigration Policy

• Children of Immigrants Data Tool
• Five Questions: Karina Fortuny on five key national and state characteristics of children of immigrants

Related Policy Centers

• Center on Labor, Human Resources, & Population

Publications on Immigrants

This report describes the work the Urban Institute performed to generate the Model of Income in the Near Term, Version 6 (MINT6). MINT is a tool developed for the Social Security Administration (SSA) to analyze the distributional consequences of Social Security reform proposals. MINT is a micro-level data file of individuals born between 1926 and 2075. It starts with a rich set of income and demographic characteristics from the 2001 and 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data linked to SSA data on earnings and benefits. MINT then projects these characteristics until death or the year 2099.

Immigration is transforming the U.S. labor force with important consequences for Social Security's adequacy and finances. Using longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation matched to administrative data on lifetime earnings and benefit receipt, we measure the extent to which nonnatives' lifetime earning patterns, payroll taxes paid, benefits received, and total incomes differ from those for the U.S.-born population. We consider other outcomes important to retirement security, like health status, marital status, and financial wealth. We also compare various immigrant groups with one another. Our findings stress heterogeneity in labor force and Social Security experiences among immigrants.

The increase in undocumented immigration between 1999 and 2007 contributed to an increase in the number of uninsured people in the United States. During this period, the number of undocumented immigrants increased from an estimated 8.5 million to 11.8 million, leading to an estimated additional 1.8 million uninsured. Undocumented immigrants accounted for one in seven of the uninsured in 2007, up from one in eight in 1999. Since undocumented immigrants will not be eligible for public insurance or private coverage obtained through exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, they will eventually constitute a larger percentage of the uninsured population.

Growth in the number of children in immigrant families during the 2000s offset the decline in children with native-born parents. Between 2000 and 2009, the minority share of U.S. children under age 18 increased from 38 to 44 percent, driven by growth in the number of Hispanic and non-Hispanic Asian children and a decline in non-Hispanic white children. While the increase in minority children included children with foreign-and native-born parents, children of immigrants accounted for most of the growth. This brief highlights important trends in the changing demographics of the U.S. child population nationally and across states.

The majority (84 percent) of the 17 million children of immigrants in the United States live in the 100 largest metropolitan areas. Children of immigrants drove the growth in the child population under age 18 nationally and in the largest metros: if it was not for them, the child population in the top 100 metros overall and in many metros would have declined in the last decade. Driven by immigration and population momentum, the child minority share across the top 100 metros reached 51 percent in 2009 and many of the largest metros became "majority minority" metros.

The Immigrant Access to Health and Human Services study maps and describes the policy context that can affect immigrant access to health and human services and the well-being of immigrants and their children. This paper summarizes federal provisions and key aspects of state-level variation related to immigrants' eligibility for TANF, SNAP, Medicaid, and CHIP based on a review of literature and the latest information. It provides a building block for the fieldwork and in-depth assessment of the policy context around immigrant access to health and human services.

Over the last two decades, the United States has witnessed its biggest wave of immigration since the late 19th century. Today’s immigrants have settled in many more communities across the country, including some that received few immigrants in the past. The diversity of these destination communities means that recent immigrants’ experiences and effects vary widely.

Join us as a distinguished panel discusses the implications of immigration’s mix and magnitude. How are metropolitan communities affected by and adapting to the influx of immigrants -- and the children of immigrants? What new challenges and opportunities confront local, state, and federal policy?

Elizabeth Peters, the founding director of Cornell University's Population Program, has joined the Urban Institute as the director of its Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population.