Immigrants

The immigrant population in the United States has burgeoned over the past few decades. From 1990 to 2006, the number of immigrants rose from 20 million to more than 37 million. Urban Institute immigration policy experts study how the foreign-born population is growing, integrating, and changing.

We have analyzed immigrants' contributions to the labor force and the economy, tracked fast-growing immigrant communities, studied the effect of No Child Left Behind on immigrant children and English Language Learners, and surveyed foreign-born households’ health, well-being, and economic mobility. Read more.

 

Featured Links

• Children of Immigrants Data Tool
• Five Questions: Rosa Maria Castaneda on immigration raids and their effects on children and communities

Contact an expert on Immigration Policy

Related Policy Centers

• Center on Labor, Human Resources, & Population

Publications on Immigrants

The number and share of children with at least one immigrant parent, the percentage of children of immigrants who are U.S. citizens, and the share of children of immigrants vs. children with native parents who are poor are just some of the data this snapshot (in English and Spanish) provides.

This fact sheet is the first in a series of publications on children of immigrants in the United States that updates the Urban Institute's May 2006 fact sheet that described the circumstances of these children in the early 2000s. The current fact sheet examines immigration trends and finds that children of immigrants are the fastest growing segment of the nation's children population - while the number of children of natives increased by 2.1 million between 1990 and 2007, children of immigrants grew by 8.1 million accounting for 77 percent of the growth of the U.S. children population during this time.

Hispanics are the largest immigrant group in the United States and the largest ethnic minority group in the nation. One in five children in the U.S. has immigrant parents. These children face a range of challenges, often caught in their communities’ changing social, political, and economic forces.

This series examines youth vulnerability and risk-taking behaviors on several outcomes for young adults, using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 cohort. Notable results suggest youth follow one of four patterns in connecting to the labor market and school in the transition to adulthood: consistently-connected, later-connected, initially-connected, or never-connected. Second generation Latinos make a fairly smooth transition to young adulthood, but are less likely to engage in post-secondary schooling than whites. Youth from low-income families, distressed neighborhoods, and youth with poor mental health engage in relatively higher levels of adolescent risk behaviors and have relatively lower earnings and levels of connectedness in early adulthood.

Low-income African American youth engage in fewer risky behaviors than low-income white youth, a new Urban Institute analysis of federal data reveals. This research on young blacks is part of a collection of eight brief studies on vulnerable youth, risky behavior, and the transition to adulthood.