CIS Publishes Latest Statistics on Immigration

The Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) recently completed a report on the impact of immigration. Immigrants, both legal and illegal, now total 37.9 million people. This number, or 12.6 percent of the total population, or one person in eight, constitutes the highest percentage of foreign-born residents since the end of the previous great wave of immigration in the 1920s.

More immigrants arrived in the seven-year period between 2000 and 2007 (10.3 million) than during any other seven-year interval in U.S. history. Approximately one-third of the 37.9 million foreign-born are illegal aliens.

The poverty rate of immigrant-headed households and their U.S.-born children (17 percent) is almost 50 percent higher than that for natives and their children. Thirty-three percent of immigrant-headed households receive support from at least one welfare program, compared with 13 percent of native families. Fifty-one percent of immigrant-headed families from Mexico, the leading source of immigrants, are recipients of at least one program.

Thirty-four percent of immigrants have no health insurance, compared with 13 percent of natives. Since 1989, immigrants and their U.S.-born children comprise 71 percent of the increase of the uninsured.

Other findings: Immigrants are somewhat less likely to be entrepreneurs. Thirteen percent of the native-born are self-employed. Contrary to claims that immigration will provide a younger population to sustain Social Security, recent immigration has not changed the nation's age structure.

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