Approximately 2.5 million immigrants from “predominantly Muslim countries” reside inside the U.S. right now, a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies found.
The four-page report, which details which countries and world regions from which immigrants in the U.S.–both legal and illegal–came to this country, found that since 2000 nearly a million more immigrants from such Muslim countries came to the U.S.
In 2000, there were 1,518,755 immigrants from Muslim countries in the U.S. In 2010, That number stood at 2,184,664, and in 2013 it stands at 2,480,407.
Between 2010 and 2013, there was actually a greater increase in the number of immigrants from the Middle East than from Central America. During that timeframe, 207,758 more immigrants moved to the U.S. from the Middle East, whereas only 113,744 immigrants came from Central America.
The report found that despite the staggering growth of immigration from the Middle East, the regions that sent even more immigrants to the U.S. in the past few years are South Asia, East Asia, and the Caribbean. South Asia, which includes India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, sent 372,546 more immigrants to the U.S. between 2010 and 2013, whereas East Asia–which includes China, Korea and Vietnam–sent 364,909 more immigrants to the U.S. during that timeframe. From the Caribbean, 223,011 more immigrants entered the U.S. between 2010 and 2013.
During that same timeframe, immigration from Mexico dropped 126,126. In 2010, there were 11,711,103 immigrants both illegal and legal in the U.S. from Mexico, according to this data set, and in 2013 there were just 11,584,977 immigrants from Mexico in the U.S.
The report, authored by Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler from CIS, relies on U.S. census data to make these observations.
“The data show that the nation’s immigrant population (legal and illegal) grew by 1.4 million from July 2010 to July 2013,” Camarota and Zeigler wrote. “The data also imply that 3.3 million new immigrants settled in the country in that same period. These new arrivals were offset by return migration and deaths among the existing population. The immigrant population, referred to as the foreign-born by the Census Bureau, includes all those who were not U.S. citizens at birth, including illegal immigrants.”
Between legal and illegal immigrants residing in the U.S., the authors found that America’s immigration population “hit a record 41.3 million in July 2013.”
“The sending regions with the largest increases from 2010 to 2013 were South Asia (up 373,000, 16 percent growth); East Asia (up 365,000, 5 percent growth); the Caribbean (up 223,000, 6 percent growth), the Middle East (up 208,000, 13 percent growth); and sub-Saharan Africa (up 177,000, 13 percent growth),” Camarota and Zeigler wrote.
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