Congressional Report: Foreign-Born Population Could Rise to 60 Million People within Ten Years

By Ryan Lovelace

A new report from the Congressional Research Service suggests the foreign-born population may increase by as many as 27.4 million people by 2022. The more than 40.8 million foreign-born residents who lived in the U.S. in 2012 represented a 321 percent increase over the amount of foreign-born persons who called America home in 1970, according to the report. And the foreign-born population will rise to nearly 58.3 million total people in 2022, if the number continues to grow at the same rate it did during the previous four decades.

If the Senate’s 2013 Gang of Eight immigration bill is implemented, the CRS report explains, the total foreign-born population could include nearly 68.3 million people by 2022. The report also notes that from fiscal year 2000 through fiscal year 2013, the U.S. welcomed nearly 1.2 million asylees and refugees into the country. These figures come amid reports that one immigrant legally enters the U.S. every 40 seconds, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The CRS report does not appear to consider the latest massive influx of Central Americans in its calculations, which suggests the number of foreign-born persons entering the U.S. in the next decade could be even greater than expected.