Hard numbers on immigration are hard to come by. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has some useful data in a recent report (p. 6) on American demographics,
CBO estimates that the number of people who entered the United States minus the number who left totaled 2.8 million in 2022, 3.3 million in 2023, and 2.7 million in 2024—far exceeding the average net immigration, 920,000 people per year, seen from 2010 to 2019.
That works out to almost nine million people net inbound in just three years. That’s an entire New York City-sized addition to the U.S. in just three years.
Add in 2021 and it goes over 10 million.
As I’ve pointed out before, about one in every six people residing in America was born elsewhere. That’s the largest number ever and the largest share of the population in America’s 250 years of existence.
Yesterday, RealClear Politics (RCP) published an analysis of this data,
According to the Congressional Budget Office, during the four years from 2021 through 2024, a net 10.3 million people immigrated to the U.S. That figure reflects the number of (legal or illegal) immigrants who entered the U.S., minus the number who left. As a result of this huge immigration influx, the portion of the U.S. population that is foreign-born hit 16.2%, per the CBO [2023 data], surpassing the all-time record of 14.8% set in 1890. That mark lasted for more than 130 years, but it couldn’t survive the Biden administration.
There is simply no precedent for this sort of experimentation on American demographics, and it obviously has not been working.
If the Trump Administration is able to keep up current efforts for the rest of 2025, America may see its first ever year with a net reduction in the foreign-born population.
Fingers crossed!
