Some Facts About Immigration To the U.S.

As of 2018, 13.7% of people in the U.S. are foreign born (this grew to 14.1% as of 2019, which would be a modern peak of 14.1%), of whom 6% are under the age of eighteen. 

The percentage of people in the U.S. who are foreign born has probably declined since this 2019 peak due to COVID driven legal immigration restrictions, and due to economic factors reducing undocumented immigration and causing foreign born persons residing in the U.S., whether or not documented, to return to their home countries.

Near the 20th century low point in 1970, 4.7% of people in the U.S. were foreign born. The percentage of the U.S. population that is foreign born population is now three times that low point half a century later. This low point was reached after declining from a peak of 14.7% in 1910. The percentage then increased steadily from 1970 to 2019.

As of 2018, 50.7% of foreign born persons in the U.S. were citizens. This percentage has been slowly but steadily increasing in recent years and is probably somewhat higher in 2022 than it was in 2018.

As of 2017, there were 10,500,000 undocumented foreign born people in the United States (3.2% of the U.S. population). This is down 13.9% from 2007, and it has probably declined further, as of 2022, despite a recent surge in refugees and undocumented immigration from Central America and Venezuela due mostly to gang activity in Central America and economic collapse in Venezuela.

There are about 26.0 million adults in the U.S. who cannot vote because they are not U.S. citizens (about 16.2 million legal immigrants and about 9.8 million undocumented immigrants).

Overall, 39% of foreign born people in the U.S. are U.S. citizens, 38% are documented immigrants, and 23% are undocumented immigrants. Of undocumented immigrants, 6% of in the DACA program (about 1.4% of all foreign born people in the U.S.).

These percentages differ considerably from state to state, however. For the 15 states with the largest absolute number of undocumented immigrants, the percentages  of foreign born people in the state who are undocumented is as follows:

State - % Pop. FB - % Pop. Undoc. - % FB Undoc. (% 10 yr. Change in Undoc.)

NC 8.4% * 3.1% * 36.8% (0.0%)
TX 17.1% * 5.9% * 34.5% (+3.2%)
NV 19.8% * 6.8% * 34.3% (-12.5%)
GA 10.3% * 3.5% * 34.0% (-11.8%)
AZ 13.4% * 3.8% * 28.4% (-45.0%)
MD 15.4% * 4.0% * 26.0% (+13.6%)
VA 12.7% * 3.2% * 25.2% (+10.0%)
IL 13.9% * 3.3% * 23.7% (-22.7%)
MA 17.3% * 3.9% * 22.5% (+25%)
WA 14.9% * 3.2% * 21.5% (0.0%)
PA 7.0% * 1.5% * 21.4% (+26.7%)
NJ 23.4% * 4.8% * 20.5% (-18.2%)
CA 26.7% - 5.1% - 19.1% (-28.6%)
FL 21.1% - 3.8% - 18.0% (-21.4%)
NY 22.4% - 3.2% - 14.3% (-35.0%)

These 15 states have a total population of 206,300,000 as of 2020.

The total of number of people in the District of Columbia and the 35 remaining states is 125,100,000 as of 2020. The number of foreign born people in the District of Columbia and the 35 remaining states is 7,992,000 which is 6.4%. The total number of undocumented foreign born people in the U.S. outside of these 15 states is 2,125,000 which is 1.7%. Thus, 26.6% of foreign born people in the District of Columbia and the 35 remaining states are undocumented.

Another way to look at immigration is to look at it by country of origin.

Country - Number of Foreign Born People - % Undoc (% 10 yr. Change in Undoc.)

Mexico 10,932 * 45.3% (-26.8%)

China and Taiwan 2,854 * 13.1% (+15.4%)

India 2,688 * 19.5% (+61.5%)

Philippines 2,045 * 7.8% (-15.8%)

El Salvador 1,412 * 53.1% (+25.0%)

Vietnam 1,384 * NA

Cuba 1,360 * NA

Dominican Republic 1,169 (+20.5%)

Guatemala 1,111 * 54.0% (+50.0%)

Korea 1,039 * NA

The number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. from Honduras and Venezuela were increasing as of 2017. The number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. from Columbia, Ecuador, Haiti and Peru were decreasing as of 2017. 

By region, foreign born people in the U.S. have the following origins:

Latin America 52% (5.2% children)

Asia 30% (5.7% children)

Europe 10% (4.8% children)

Other 8% (13.4% children)

Black Immigrants In The U.S.

The share of African, Afro-Caribbean, and black Latin American legal immigration to the U.S. is modest, many of those immigrants are naturalized citizens, and those immigrants overwhelmingly have passports. About 6-7% of undocumented immigrants in the United States are black (see here and here) and those undocumented immigrants are overwhelming recent immigrants. As the Pew Research Center explains in a 2015 report:

A record 3.8 million black immigrants live in the United States today, more than four times the number in 1980, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. Black immigrants now account for 8.7% of the nation’s black population, nearly triple their share in 1980.

Rapid growth in the black immigrant population is expected to continue. The Census Bureau projects that by 2060, 16.5% of U.S. blacks will be immigrants. In certain metropolitan areas, foreign-born blacks make up a significant share of the overall black population. For example, among the metropolitan areas with the largest black populations, roughly a third of blacks (34%) living in the Miami metro area are immigrants. In the New York metro area, that share is 28%. And in the Washington, D.C., area, it is 15%.

Black immigrants are from many parts of the world, but half are from the Caribbean alone. Jamaica is the largest source country with about 682,000 black immigrants born there, accounting for 18% of the national total. Haiti follows with 586,000 black immigrants, making up 15% of the U.S. black immigrant population.

However, much of the recent growth in the size of the black immigrant population has been fueled by African immigration. Between 2000 and 2013, the number of black African immigrants living in the U.S. rose 137%, from 574,000 to 1.4 million. Africans now make up 36% of the total foreign-born black population, up from 24% in 2000 and just 7% in 1980.

Among black immigrants from Africa, virtually all are from sub-Saharan African countries, with only 1% of all black immigrants from North Africa. Nigeria, with 226,000 immigrants, and Ethiopia, with 191,000, are the two largest birth countries for black African immigrants to the U.S.

Black immigrants have roots in other parts of the world as well. Some 5% of all black immigrants are from South America and 4% are from Central America; those from Europe make up 2% of the population and those from South and East Asia make up 1%.

Many black immigrants are from Spanish-speaking countries. Among these, the Dominican Republic is the largest country of birth, accounting for 161,000 black immigrants. Mexico is also a source of black immigration with roughly 70,000 black immigrants. Some 41,000 are from Cuba, and 32,000 are Panamanian. Moreover, 11% of the foreign-born black population identifies as Hispanic. . . .

The modern wave of black immigration to the U.S. began when U.S. immigration policy changed in the 1960s, becoming more open to a wider variety of migrants. Just like other immigrants, foreign-born blacks benefited from the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that emphasized family reunification and skilled immigrant labor. In addition, the Refugee Act of 1980 loosened immigration restrictions by allowing more immigrants from conflict areas such as Ethiopia and Somalia to seek asylum in the U.S. Finally, the U.S. Immigration Act of 1990 sought to increase the number of immigrants from underrepresented nations, and although the act was initially intended to increase the flow of European immigrants, Africans have benefited from the program, as well.

This act, also known as the diversity visa program, has been an important way for African immigrants to gain entry into the U.S. About one-in-five sub-Saharan African immigrants (19%) who gained legal permanent residence between 2000 and 2013 entered through this program.

During the same period, about three-in-ten (28%) sub-Saharan African immigrants arrived in the U.S. as refugees or asylees. That share was only 5% for Caribbean immigrants and 13% for the overall immigrant population. Caribbean immigrants are much more likely to enter the U.S. through family-sponsored

Caribbean and sub-Saharan African immigrants are less likely to have been granted admittance via employment-based visa programs than immigrants overall.

Languages Spoken At Home

For the U.S. as a whole, 78% of the U.S. population speaks only English at home, 14% speak a language other than English at home but speak English "very well", and 8% speak a language other than English at home and do not speak English "very well."

The most common language spoken at home other than English is Spanish. This is spoken at home by 13.5% of people in the U.S. out of the 22% of people in the U.S. who speak a language other than English at home (about 61% of non-native English speakers), and 5.2% of people in the U.S. who do not speak English "very well" speak Spanish at home out of 8% of people in the US. who do not speak English "vey well" (about 65% of non-fluent English speakers and 38.6% of non-native English speakers who speak Spanish). 

A language other than English or Spanish is spoken at home by 8.5% of people in the U.S. About 2.8% of people in the U.S. do not speak either English or Spanish "very well," while 5.7% of people in the U.S. are not native speakers of English or Spanish but speak English "very well."

The runner up is Chinese which is spoken at home by 1.13% of people in the U.S. (about 5% of non-native English speakers). The percentage of people in the U.S. who are native Chinese language speakers who do not speak English "very well" is 0.59% (about 21% of people who do not speak either English or Spanish "very well"). 

This number conceals the fact, however, that there are many Chinese topolects which are not mutually intelligible in spoken form despite sharing a common set of historical Chinese characters (although not all Chinese speakers, particularly in the U.S. can read Chinese characters, and even among those who are literate in Chinese characters many people can not read both the simplified character system promoted by the People's Republic of China and also traditional Chinese characters). A similar situation exists with respect to languages collectively characterized as Arabic.

The percentage of people who speak a language other than English at home who do not speak English "very well" varies widely by native language (and there are some native speakers of almost every non-moribund language in the world who live in the U.S.). It is highest for Vietnamese (56.9%), Chinese (52.0%), Korean (51.0%), and speakers of Thai, Lao, or other Tai-Kadai (51.0%). 

It is lowest for Hebrew (11.7%), Native American languages other the Navajo (12.3%), German (15.0%), Tamil (15.7%), Hindi (17.7%), Telugu (19.0%), other Dravidian languages (19.8%), French including Cajun (20.2%), West African languages (20.9%), and Greek (22.8%). 

The high level of English language fluency among South Asian language speakers reflect the fact that English bilingualism is common in India where it is a linga franca dating to the centuries that it spent (prior to the separation of what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh from India) as an English colony, and the fact that South Asian migration is heavily weighted towards highly educated professionals (especially in information technology, engineering and medicine). 

A significant number of West African immigrants are likewise from countries such as Nigeria, a former English colony, and Liberia (a country founded by former U.S. slaves), where English is a lingua franca.

Non-Native English speaking does not coincide perfectly with being foreign born. Essentially all non-native English speakers in the U.S. who speak native American languages and Cajun, are U.S. born, as are many U.S. born children of foreign born immigrants (sometimes called "second generation immigrants).

Sources

My source is The World Almanac and Book Of Facts 2022 when not otherwise noted. It is relying on the Pew Research Center for undocumented immigration numbers. It is relying on the American Community Survey (conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau) for language information.