How Mass Immigration Impacts

Do you live in one of these areas?

Population growth is inevitable and normal. Huge influxes of extra foreigners in your city is not.

The foreign-born population rose from ~10 million in 1970 to ~20 million in 1990, and to ~53 million in 2025. While most of the land in the country has not many foreigners coming in, specific cities have seen huge changes.

In Miami, 43.6% of residents were born abroad. In San Jose, 41.3%. On the other hand, Pittsburgh sits at 4.6%, Cleveland at 6.2%, and St. Louis at 5.6%.

Metro area growth

New York added 3.1 million people since 1990. Foreign-born residents account for 2.7 million of them, or 87.5% of the growth.

Phoenix added 2.9 million people over the same period, nearly as many as New York. 587,092 of them were born abroad, which is 19.9% of its growth. A home in New York now costs 6.5 years of median household income. In Phoenix it costs 5.2.

A Common Story

When immigration runs too high, a pause is needed. After decades of mass immigration, the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 capped permanent admissions near 165,000 a year, and the share fell for four straight decades to 4.7% in 1970, the lowest ever recorded.

The Hart-Celler Act of 1965 ended the national-origins quotas and rebuilt admission around family sponsorship. The share moved slowly at first, from 4.7% in 1970 to 7.9% in 1990.

The Immigration Act of 1990 raised the annual ceiling from 270,000 to 675,000, created the H-1B visa and the Diversity Visa lottery, and legalized dual intent, which turned temporary visas into a path to permanent residence. The share reached 15.8% in January 2025, higher than at any point in the first wave.

64%

Of the U.S. foreign-born population lives in 20 metro areas

New York holds 13% on its own, Los Angeles 9%, Miami 6%.

33.5M
Foreign-born residents added since 1990
From 19.8 million in 1990 to 53.3 million in January 2025.
15.8%
Foreign-born share of the population, January 2025
Above the first-wave peak of 14.8% in 1890.
48%
Growth in the top 20 immigration metros, 1990-2025
The 20 metros that drew the fewest grew 23%.
13%
Of the U.S. foreign-born population lives in New York alone
Los Angeles holds 9%, Miami 6%.
4.7%
Foreign-born share in 1970, the lowest on record
After four decades of restriction. It is 15.8% now.

Sources

U.S. Census Bureau decennial census and American Community Survey; Migration Policy Institute, U.S. Immigrant Population by Metropolitan Area; Center for Immigration Studies analysis of Census CPS data.

Sources

  1. Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Foreign-Born Workers: Labor Force Characteristics, 2025, for how foreign-born and native-born workers are distributed across the five broad occupation groups; Current Population Survey annual averages for employment by nativity, 31.3 million and 132.2 million. The share in each group is the foreign-born count divided by the total, computed from those two published figures. The Labor Department built the 2025 annual averages from eleven months because of the federal government shutdown that October, and notes they are not strictly comparable with other years. The five groups above are the only occupational split the Labor Department publishes by nativity; the jobs listed beside each bar are the detailed occupations it rolls into that group.
  2. Sources: Migration Policy Institute; Census Bureau Historical Data; DHS Yearbook
  3. By year: median sales price of houses sold (U.S. Census Bureau and HUD, FRED series MSPUS, annual average of the four quarters) divided by median household income (Census Current Population Survey). One consistent basis across every point from 1975 to 2024; nothing is spliced. FRED's income series begins in 1984, so the 1975 and 1980 points are taken from Census Table H-6, which carries the same household series back to 1975. That is as far back as it goes: earlier years exist only for family income, a different and lower basis. By metro: American Community Survey 2024 one-year estimates, median home VALUE divided by median household income across all 109 metros over 500,000 people. Value-based ratios run about a point below sale-price ratios, so a metro reading 5.2x is not directly comparable with the national 5.0x above it.
  4. Bubbles show foreign-born population for the 30 U.S. metro areas with the largest foreign-born populations, U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2024 1-year: each metro's foreign-born share applied to its population, one basis for all thirty. Those 30 metros hold about 81% of the foreign-born counted across the 109 metro areas over 500,000 people. The national total and its growth from 1990 to January 2025 are from the U.S. Census decennial counts, ACS, and CIS analysis of the Current Population Survey. Immigrant stock including U.S.-born children is anchored to Migration Policy Institute's 2024 estimate of about 93M (51.9M foreign-born plus 41.1M U.S.-born children). Because no annual stock series exists, the animation applies measured first-plus-second-generation ratios from Pew's historical series to this map's foreign-born series and interpolates between benchmark years; the animated stock is therefore an estimate, not a Census count. The three largest countries of birth in each popup are ACS 2024 table B05006, via the Census Reporter API: one-year for 26 of the 30 metro areas, the same vintage as the bubble counts, and the 2024 five-year table for Austin, San Antonio, Providence and Fresno, which do not publish country-level place of birth at one-year. The table's regional roll-ups ("Caribbean", "Eastern Africa") and its residual "Other" rows are excluded before ranking, so every entry is a country.
  5. Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2023, for the distribution of English ability among immigrant adults and the 22.3 million total; KFF/LA Times Survey of Immigrants (2023) for the reported difficulties, insurance coverage, and self-reported health. Both series count adults aged 18 and over born outside the United States.
  6. American Community Survey 2024 1-year, tables B08303 and B05002. Mean commute is computed from the published time bands. This is a correlation across metros, not a causal estimate: immigrants settle in large, dense, job-rich metros, which are also where commutes are long for everyone.
  7. U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024 1-year (home value, income, rent, foreign-born); Census population estimates (1990, 2025). Home price-to-income here is the ACS home-VALUE basis, which runs about 1.2 points below the median sale-price basis used for the national figure and is not comparable to it. Two of the 111 metros over 500,000 people are absent: Killeen, TX and Springfield, MO, which lack matched home-value and income data in this release, leaving 109.
  8. Population, 1990: U.S. Census Bureau, County Population Estimates 1990-2000 (CO-99-8), the April 1 1990 census base, summed over the counties of each metro's 2023 OMB delineation so both years sit on the same footprint. Population and foreign-born, 2024: American Community Survey 2024 1-year estimates, at metropolitan statistical area level. Foreign-born, 1990: U.S. Census Bureau Working Paper POP-twps0029 (Gibson and Lennon, 1999), Table 16, "Nativity of the Population for Metropolitan Areas With 500,000 or More Population: 1990", summed over the 1990 metro areas that make up the modern footprint. The native-born column is the difference between the two measured series, which makes it exactly the change in the native-born population: total 2024 less foreign-born 2024, against the same subtraction for 1990. Census counts as native anyone born in the United States, Puerto Rico or a U.S. Island Area, or abroad to a U.S.-citizen parent. Counties that were rural in 1990 sit outside the 1990 nativity table, which affects Atlanta (8.1% of its modern population), Phoenix (5.2%), Minneapolis (4.5%) and San Jose (2.4%, San Benito County) and slightly overstates their foreign-born growth. Median home price to income is ACS 2024 1-year median home value divided by median household income, the same basis as the metro scatter; it runs about 1.2 points below the national median SALE-price ratio and is not comparable to it.
  9. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024 one-year estimates, tables B25064 (median gross rent), B25119 (median household income by tenure) and B25070 (gross rent as a percentage of household income). Gross rent includes utilities. The distribution covers the 42,954,477 renter households for which a ratio can be computed; the 3.1 million with no cash rent or no income are excluded rather than counted as affordable. Comparing rent to the median income of all households understates the burden badly, because that figure is lifted by owners, who earn $100,721 at the median against $54,446 for renters. For the same reason, a long-run comparison of a rent index against median family income shows rent falling relative to income since 1970, which is an artifact of the denominator rather than a description of what renters face.
  10. American Community Survey 2024 1-year, Table B27020. An uninsured patient still receives emergency care: federal law requires any hospital taking Medicare to screen and stabilise anyone who arrives, whatever their ability to pay or immigration status.
  11. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, annual averages of the civilian labor force aged 16-19, 20-24 and 25-34, summed, retrieved from the BLS public data API. The labor force counts everyone working or looking for work, and it counts workers here illegally alongside everyone else. Set against the resident population rather than counted outright, the young cohort is 17.6 per 100 Americans in 2025 against 17.2 in 1950 and 23.9 in 1980: the country aged, so the young are a smaller share of it even as their absolute number reached a record. BLS does not publish the labor force broken down by age and place of birth together, so the foreign-born share of this particular pool cannot be shown. Because of the 2025 federal government shutdown, BLS built the 2025 annual averages from eleven months and notes they are not strictly comparable with other years.