The U.S. Census Bureau is changing the way it counts immigrants in annual estimates by including more people who were admitted for humanitarian and often temporary reasons.
Officials said Monday the change is being made in an effort to better reflect population changes this decade. Population projections, including immigration, are due to be released Thursday, showing how the populations of the United States and the 50 states have changed this year. However, the new approach to counting immigrants will be reflected only at the national level.
The percentage of foreign-born US residents is set to reach its highest level in more than a century in 2023. Under the new system it could be even higher. Census Bureau officials wouldn’t say Monday how big they expect the immigration figures to be released Thursday to be because of the change.
Figuring out the number of new immigrants is the most difficult part of the annual U.S. population estimate. Although the newly announced change in methodology is unrelated, its timing comes a month before the return to the White House of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised mass deportations of people in the United States illegally.
“We believe this was a good approach to making our estimates more current and reflecting recent trends,” said Eric Jensen, a senior research scientist at the Census Bureau.
The bureau’s annual count of how many immigrants entered the United States in 2020 is much lower than the numbers cited by other federal agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office. The Census Bureau estimates that 1.1 million immigrants will enter the United States in 2023, while the Congressional Budget Office estimates 3.3 million people.
The group of people who are included in international migration projections are those who enter the country through humanitarian parole, who have been denied access to standard immigration routes by Republican and Democratic presidential administrations for seven decades due to time pressure or the poverty of their government. Provided to those unable to do so. The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based research organization, said last week that more than 5.8 million people were admitted under various humanitarian policies from 2021 to 2024.
Trump appears certain to end humanitarian parole, having said during his campaign that he would end “the outrageous abuses of parole.” The annual population estimate released by the Census Bureau each year is calculated from births, deaths, migration within the United States, and migration between states. Population estimates provide official population counts for the United States, 50 states, counties, and metro areas each year between the once-a-decade censuses. These data are used to distribute trillions of dollars in federal funding.
