The Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey from January of this year showed 53.3 million foreign-born or immigrant residents (legal and illegal alike) in the United States, equal to 15.8% of the total population. Both are record highs in American history.
My colleague Karen Zeigler and I estimate 38 million of the total foreign born in the data are legal immigrants — naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents, and long-term temporary visitors such as foreign students and guest workers. The simplistic idea that legal immigration must be good and illegal immigration is bad avoids the important policy questions raised by the enormous scale of legal immigration.
There are four important things to keep in mind about legal immigration. First, its scale. One in eight adults in the U.S. is a legal immigrant. Second, most legal immigrants are not admitted based on their skills or the needs of the U.S. economy. Third, the whole system runs largely on autopilot with little consideration of the fiscal, economic, political, or cultural impact on our country. Finally, legal and illegal immigration are closely linked.
Legal immigration can be roughly divided into two types, permanent and temporary. Lawful permanent residents, also called green card holders, can live and work in the United States as long as they like and become naturalized citizens after a few years. In recent years, about two-thirds of the 1.1 million new green cards went to the relatives of current LPRs already here and to U.S. citizens — mostly naturalized citizens. Each new immigrant tends to create ever more demand for new green cards under such a system.
About 12% of new LPRs are admitted for humanitarian reasons. This includes refugees, who are brought from overseas for permanent resettlement. It also includes asylees, meaning individuals who claim persecution once here, often after arriving illegally. Only a small fraction of applicants actually qualify for asylum, but applying delays deportation for years as the case winds its way through the overwhelmed immigration courts. Other humanitarian categories include Iraqis and Afghans employed by the U.S., and their families, cancellation of removal, and victims of crimes and their families. In 2023, these miscellaneous humanitarian categories nearly matched the number of refugees.
About 18% of new green cards also go to those who are thought to have special abilities or skills. However, this includes the spouses and children of the primary immigrant, so the actual percentage admitted based on skills is smaller. In addition, there is the Diversity Visa Lottery that randomly gives out 55,000 green cards a year to people from countries that send relatively few immigrants — about 20 million applied in FY2025. This is a powerful reminder of the enormous number of people who want to come here, even excluding all the top immigrant-sending countries.
In addition to permanent immigration, there are also temporary long-term visitors, technically known as “non-immigrants.” Prior to COVID-19, DHS estimated 3.2 million non-immigrants lived in the country — mostly guest workers, foreign students, diplomats, and cultural exchange visitors. By 2025, the number is likely closer to 4 million. Hundreds of thousands of non-immigrants arrive each year, but a significant number also leave. This is also true of permanent immigrants. The 38 million temporary and permanent immigrants living in the country does not include the tens of millions of children born to legal immigrants in the U.S. The total number of legal immigrants living in the country who arrived after 1965, when the law was liberalized, plus their U.S.-born progeny likely number close to 60 million.
On top of these figures, there are some 15 million illegal immigrants in the 2025 CPS, plus some undetermined number missed by the survey. It is well established that illegal immigration is closely linked to legal immigration. As legal immigration has increased in the last six decades, so has illegal immigration. Many of the top illegal-sending countries are also the top legal immigrant-sending countries. According to Pew Research, millions of legal immigrants live with illegal immigrants. Migration is very much driven by social networks. Friends and family provide information to those back home about conditions here and then help newcomers once they arrive. High levels of legal immigration contributes to high levels of illegal immigration.
We need to address the big questions here. Is mass legal immigration overwhelming the assimilation process? Should we continue to have a system that puts so little emphasis on skills? How do we have legal immigration without spurring illegal immigration? Given the level of legal immigration, it has a much larger impact on our country than illegal immigration, so formulating sensible policy in this area is at least as important as addressing illegal immigration.
Steve Camarota is Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies