Recent Immigration Surge Has Been Largest in U.S. History

The immigration surge of the past few years has been the largest in U.S. history, surpassing the great immigration boom of the late 1800s and early 1900s, according to a New York Times analysis of government data.

Annual net migration — the number of people coming to the country minus the number leaving — averaged 2.4 million people from 2021 to 2023, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Total net migration during the Biden administration is likely to exceed eight million people.

That’s a faster pace of arrivals than during any other period on record, including the peak years of Ellis Island traffic, when millions of Europeans came to the United States. Even after taking into account today’s larger U.S. population, the recent surge is the most rapid since at least 1850:

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The numbers in the Times analysis include both legal and illegal immigration. About 60 percent of immigrants who have entered the country since 2021 have done so without legal authorization, according to a Goldman Sachs report based on government data.

The combined increases of legal and illegal immigration have caused the share of the U.S. population born in another country to reach a new high, 15.2 percent in 2023, up from 13.6 percent in 2020. The previous high was 14.8 percent, in 1890.

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Even with all the political attention on immigration, the precise size of the surge has been unclear because of the different ways that the federal government collects data. When looking at the distant past, researchers rely on once-a-decade Census Bureau surveys of the population. Those surveys include a question about birthplace.

But over the short term — and especially during periods of change — the Census Bureau can underestimate the size of the immigrant population, outside researchers say. For one thing, some immigrants, especially those without legal status, are likely to avoid replying to surveys. And the census uses a statistical technique that assumes that the country’s population is not changing rapidly from year to year, rather than trying to measure precisely how it might have grown.

Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, noted that the census also undercounted the immigration population in the 1990s, when levels were rising. It later revised those numbers upward.

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An annual census survey, known as the American Community Survey, shows net migration of only 900,000 from 2020 to 2023. The C.B.O., Goldman Sachs and Oxford Economics all estimate that net migration exceeded two million people during those years and likely will again this year.

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What happens next is less clear. During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump promised to conduct mass deportations, and many Americans favor the policy. In a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted in October, 57 percent of voters said they supported deporting immigrants who were living in the country illegally.

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Whatever the number in a second Trump term, the recent immigration surge has probably ended. Mr. Biden’s crackdown since the summer has caused net migration to drop sharply, and Mr. Trump has promised even tougher border policies when he takes office. Many would-be immigrants will be less likely to try to enter the country, knowing that their chances of success are lower.

There is an historical echo with a century ago. The immigration wave of the late 1800s and early 1900s also sparked a political backlash, leading to a 1924 law that tightly restricted immigration. Those restrictions remained largely in place for more than four decades.

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