Pew: Illegal Aliens in U.S. Nearly a Quarter of Foreign-Born Population

Illegal aliens now comprise nearly a quarter of the country’s total foreign-born population, which has continued growing to 45.6 million, a demography study finds.

The latest study by Pew Research Center reveals that about 23 percent of the country’s booming foreign-born population is illegally living in the United States. Since 1990, when an estimated 3.4 million illegal aliens were in the U.S., the illegal alien population has tripled in size.

While the illegal alien population has reached unprecedented highs, so has the legal immigrant population living in the U.S. Today, there are an estimated 35.2 million legal immigrants living in the country.

The last time the U.S. foreign-born population was this high was in 1910 when immigrants made up 14.7 percent of the total country’s population.

The country’s last immigration boom — between 1900 and 1920 — was eventually met with a near immigration moratorium. Between 1925 and 1966, the yearly U.S. legal immigration level did not exceed 327,000 admissions, a four-decades-long near moratorium that allowed the massive inflows of immigrants from before 1925 the ability to assimilate.

Since 1980, though, the number of legal immigrants admitted to the U.S. every year has not dipped below 525,000. Since 1999, annual legal immigration levels have not dropped below 645,000. And since 2004, the number of legal immigrants admitted to the U.S. every year has not dipped below 957,000 admissions a year.

Mass immigration has come at the expense of America’s working and middle class, which has suffered from poor job growth, stagnant wages, and increased public costs to offset the importation of millions of low-skilled foreign nationals.

Four million young Americans enter the workforce every year, but their job opportunities are further diminished as the U.S. imports roughly two new foreign workers for every four American workers who enter the workforce.

For blue-collar American workers, mass immigration has not only kept wages down but in many cases decreased wages, as Breitbart News reported. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues importing more foreign nationals with whom working-class Americans are forced to compete. In 2016, the U.S. brought in about 1.8 million mostly low-skilled illegal and legal immigrants.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.