How does immigration to the country compare with global trends?
Immigrants in the United States are over 35 million people. That’s the largest number in the history of our country; it’s also larger than the entire Canadian population. While immigration peaked in the 1990s, we continue to have very large numbers of immigrants coming to our cities. What remains very, very interesting and has become kind of an enduring problem in the new immigration, is that while overall numbers have declined, the number of undocumented immigrants has remained stable. Since the 1990s, the United States has been receiving about a million people every year – that’s legal and illegal – but now probably more undocumented immigrants come to the United States than documented immigrants. Immigration today is part of a global phenomenon. The best estimates suggest that we have between 175 and 185 million immigrants worldwide. This is the largest migratory wave in human history. For the first time, all regions of the world are involved in large-scale migration. What is drivin
