Immigration 101
The U.S. immigration system is complex and can be difficult to understand. These resources provide key data points, historical information, and background on hot topics in immigration. Learn the basics about immigration. Immigration in the United States is complex and ever-evolving. Start here to understand the fundamental aspects of immigration policy, its history, and its impact on both individuals and the country at large. Learn commonly used terms about immigration law and how the U.S. immigration system is designed. Explore layered topics like how and whether immigrants can become citizens, as well as what individual protections look like under the law.
How the United States Immigration System Works
- How the Immigration System Works
- June 24, 2024
U.S. immigration law is very complex, and there is much confusion as to how it works. This fact sheet provides basic information…
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Birthright Citizenship in the United States
- Birthright Citizenship
- October 16, 2024
This fact sheet explains birthright citizenship, the Fourteenth Amendment, and its interpretations. Who is…
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Asylum in the United States
- Asylum
- August 27, 2014
Asylum seekers must navigate a difficult and complex process that can involve multiple government…
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What Biden Means for Immigration Reform
This past weekend, presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, introduced Joseph Biden of Delaware as his vice-presidential running mate. Pro-immigrant and labor groups have lauded Obama's decision to run next to a six-term senator with foreign policy expertise and a firm commitment to comprehensive immigration reform. Frank Sharry of America's voice and a featured panelist at NDN's Immigration Reform and the Next Administration forum event at the DNC said in a released statement "As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he [Biden] has been a strong, consistent and unwavering supporter of common sense immigration reform. Biden understands, as do the majority of Americans, that the immigration system is broken and the current Administration has failed miserably to solve the problem." Read More
Olympic Win Highlights Immigration Challenges
On Tuesday night, Henry Cejudo nabbed an Olympic gold medal for the U.S. and realized the dream that his mother, Nelly Rico, carried with her as she crossed the border from Mexico over twenty years ago. Rico—an undocumented immigrant—encouraged her children to work hard and aim high. Now her son is an American hero and the youngest American wrestler to win a gold in the Olympics. Read More
Voodoo Science Blames Climate Change on Immigrants
According to the anti-immigrant group, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), immigrants to the US are now to blame for extreme weather, rising sea levels, changing ecosystems, melting glaciers, and dying polar bears. Forget conservation and sustainability, CIS has released yet another junk science report claiming that the key to reducing global CO2 emissions is lowering immigration levels in the US. CIS accuses environmentalists of frivolously focusing too much on energy conservation and efficiency and having "assiduously avoided the underlying issue of growing energy demand driven by immigration-fueled population growth." Meanwhile, US government scientists say there's insufficient evidence to draw any clear conclusion of immigration's impact on the environment. In fact, it's the DHS' crude enforcement measures that have proved most environmentally destructive. Read More
Immigrants Integrate as Census Predicts Minority Boom
Over five hundred immigrants gathered on July 4, 2007 to take the oath of citizenship. Last week the US Census Bureau projected that minorities will grow to become a majority by the year 2042. A recent New York Times article pointed out that the main reason for the accelerating change is significantly higher birthrates among immigrants. While some fear that demographic shifts threaten American identity, research and experience has shown that today’s immigrants integrate into American society just as generations of immigrants before them. Immigrants are learning English, buying property, intermarrying, becoming U.S. citizens, and otherwise weaving themselves into the fabric of this nation. Read More
The Politics of Contradiction: Immigration Enforcement vs. Economic Integration
Since the mid-1980s, the federal government has tried repeatedly, without success, to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants to the United States with immigration-enforcement initiatives: deploying more agents, fences, flood lights, aircraft, cameras, and sensors along the southwest border with Mexico; increasing the number of worksite raids and arrests conducted throughout the country; expanding detention facilities to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants apprehended each year; and creating new bureaucratic procedures to expedite the return of detained immigrants to their home countries. At the same time, the economic integration of North America, the western hemisphere, and the world has accelerated, facilitating the rapid movement of goods, services, capital, information, and people across international borders. Moreover, the U.S. economy demands more workers at both the high-skilled and less-skilled ends of the occupational spectrum than the rapidly aging, native-born population provides. The U.S. government’s enforcement-without-reform approach to undocumented immigration has created an unsustainable contradiction between U.S. immigration policy and the U.S. economy. So far, the economy is winning. Read More
Today’s Immigrant Woman Entrepreneur
Immigrant women entrepreneurs are rapidly making their mark in the U.S. business sector, in every region of the country and across a large range of industries. Today, immigrant women of the post-1960s wave of immigration comprise one of the fastest growing groups of business owners in the United States. This study examines the rise of immigrant women entrepreneurs and profiles them as a group using data from the 2000 Decennial Census and other sources. Read More
Thinking Ahead About Our Immigrant Future: New Trends and Mutual Benefits in Our Aging Society
By Dowell Myers, Ph.D. There are two stories now being told about immigration and the future of America. Each has some basis in fact, although one is based on newer trends and is more optimistic than the other. These stories differ in their answers to three crucial questions: whether immigration to the United States is accelerating out of control or is slowing; how much immigrants are assimilating into American society and progressing economically over time; and how important immigrants are to the U.S. economy. The pessimistic story—in which immigration is portrayed as increasing dramatically and producing a growing population of unassimilated foreigners—draws upon older evidence. But more recent data and analysis suggest a far more positive vision of our immigrant future. Immigration has not only begun to level off, but immigrants are climbing the socio-economic ladder, and will become increasingly important to the U.S. economy as workers, taxpayers, and homebuyers supporting the aging Baby Boom generation. Read More
The Myth of Immigrant Criminality and the Paradox of Assimilation
Because many immigrants to the United States, especially Mexicans and Central Americans, are young men who arrive with very low levels of formal education, popular stereotypes tend to associate them with higher rates of crime and incarceration. The fact that… Read More
Undocumented Immigration by Congressional Districts
In this IPC Policy Brief, author Rob Paral uses new census data to update his earlier IPC report (Playing Politics on Immigration: Congress Favors Image over Substance in Passing H.R. 4437) on the number of undocumented immigrants in U.S. congressional districts. Read More
The Growth and Reach of Immigration: New Census Bureau Data Underscore Importance of Immigrants
New data from the 2005 American Community Survey (ACS), released by the Census Bureau on August 15, 2006, underscore the extent to which immigration continues to fuel the expansion of the U.S. labor force. Read More
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