Funded Research
Estimates of the Foreign-Born Population of the United States by Migration Status and Geography
Source: US Census Bureau/SABRE Systems, Inc.
Active: 08/04/2007 - 09/30/2008
Investigator(s):
Jennifer Van Hook
Frank D. Bean (U.C.-Irvine)
The renewed importance of immigration for population growth in the United States, together with the growing demand for contemporary estimates of unauthorized migration for states and localities underscore the need to develop estimates of the foreign born by migrant status. Over the last generation, immigration has come to play an increasingly important role in demographic change, public policy, and the economy of the United States. New immigrants and births to immigrants dominated population change during the 1990s. Over half the growth of the U.S. labor force during the decade came from immigration (Sum et al. 2003). Eligibility for many public benefits is now conditional not only on nativity, but on citizenship and legal status (e.g., Fix and Passel 2002). Measurement of immigration and specifically many of its components is the principal determinant of the accuracy of the Census Bureau's estimates of population, demographic and survey-based measures of decennial census undercount, and population projections. While the significance of immigration at the national level is widely recognized, significant measurement issues still require attention, including, for example, the unauthorized population, the legal nonimmigrant population, emigration, and internal migration.
