Indians outnumber Chinese among immigrants living in US

Indian and Chinese immigrants accounted for 6 percent each of the total immigration count in 2022.

About 6 percent of the 33-odd crore immigrants living in the US is Indian, marginally outnumbering the Chinese, according to the latest census figures.

Immigrants, both legal and illegal ones, make up about 13.9 percent of the US population as of July 2022, a shade above the slice of the pie measured in the previous year. Put simply, one out of seven people living in the US is categorised foreign-born, a newspaper report said.

The census recorded 28.4 lakh Indians, reflecting a 4.8 percent increase from the previous year’s count of 27.09 lakhs. Chinese immigrants, on the other hand, saw an increase of 79,000, totalling 28.3 lakhs, posting a nearly 3 percent rise. Despite Mexicans maintaining the highest count at 106.8 lakhs (constituting 23 percent of the immigrant population), there was a marginal fall of less than 1 percent compared to the previous year's statistic, the Times of India reported on September 24, citing the census data.

Moneycontrol couldn’t verify the report independently.

Comparing the number of immigrants from the top three countries—Mexico, India, and China—the figures for immigrants from Afghanistan and Venezuela are comparatively lower, standing at 4.07 lakh and 6.7 lakh, respectively. However, due to a huge influx of asylum seekers and refugees from these two countries, the percentage jump in 2022 over the data from 2021 is substantial, reaching 229 percent for Afghanistan and 22 percent for Venezuela.

Addressing concerns raised by certain sections regarding the increase in the number of immigrants, David J Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a think tank based in Washington, highlighted in a post that the immigrant share of the US population only rose by 0.3 percentage points, going from 13.6 percent to 13.9 percent from July 2021 to July 2022. He further elaborated that the growth in the immigrant share of the population over the last decade (2012-2022) was the lowest ever. In 2012, immigrants constituted 13.1 percent of the US population, a figure that has only increased by 0.7 percentage points, the daily reported.

Bier emphasised that the growth in the immigrant share has reduced by 76 percent since the 1990s, providing context to the recent immigration trends in the US.