Immigration Is Rising…Maybe?
Different Figures Across Different Sources
We’re getting late enough in 2016 that we can venture early guesses at what total 2015 immigration looked like. Now, we don’t quite have all the data we need, but we’ve got enough to make some educated guesses.
Broadly speaking, to get a good idea of immigration for a given year, we need the American Community Survey, Census Population Estimates, Refugee admissions, Asylee admissions, an estimate of illegal immigration, and other “green card” admissions. Of these, we have ACS, Census, refugees, and illegal immigration, and we have good indications of what asylees and general green card admissions will be.
Broadly speaking, the various sources we have don’t seem to give a very consistent picture of immigration.
Let’s start be repeating a chart I’ve shown you before of ACS gross immigration Census estimated net immigration, and the implied emigration:
Last time I presented this chart, I didn’t have 2015 ACS data. Now we do. And it shows a rise in gross immigration.
But we can also look at the estimated gross number of immigrants based on administrative data. Last time, I presented this chart:
Unfortunately, I can’t update this as, although USCIS has released their quarterly forms-processing report for all of 2015, that report is tricky to align with actual number of people processed. As such, we’re waiting on the annual Immigration Yearbook.
But there are some pieces of this chart that we can figure out. For example, I estimate illegal immigration by a simple transformation of data on southwest border apprehensions, with some adjustments for Pew’s rigorous estimates of the total relevant population. This method is pretty similar to what everybody else working on this topic does. And now, we have that data for 2015. Here’s what my estimate of illegal immigration looks like:
So illegal inflows, which constitute a very large share of total immigration, fell substantially in 2015. That means that, in order to boost the ACS 2015 figure, legal inflows must have risen substantially.
We don’t have final data on legal inflows. But for the few categories where I can trace out the connection between forms-filed and immigrants-arrived, it seems that the increase in immigration was between 5% and 35% (yeah I know that’s an insanely wide range), and most likely between 10–25%. We’re probably looking at about 1.2 million legal, non-refugee, non-asylee immigrants in 2015, plus ~90,000 refugees and asylees. We have exact figures for refugees, but not yet for asylees.
In other words, that 200,000-immigrant-decline in illegal inflows may have been fully offset by higher legal immigration, but only just barely. We had just over 1 million immigrants in 2014, so a move to 1.2 million could mostly offset lower illegal inflows.
There are some other factors that could matter. For example, ACS picks up many people who don’t have permanent residence but are nonetheless here legally. The prime example would be students. The number of foreign students in the US did rise by about 100,000 in 2015. So that could explain ACS giving us a higher figure.
Buuuut there’s a bigger problem. Let’s say I plug in my 1.2 million figure for total legal immigration.
Yuck! Using just administrative data on legal inflows, we don’t even get close to the ACS estimate of gross inflows. But using administrative data and an illegal immigration estimate, we get a really, really high number.
And worse, it’s not just a change in levels, it’s a change in trend! Whereas ACS data shows rising immigration over the last 8 years or so, administrative data shows basically stable levels, while data supplemented with illegal immigration estimates show falling immigration. Yikes!
There are several ways to resolve this data. One is to remind ourselves that probably 100,00–400,000 foreign students a year show up in the ACS as “new arrivals” and that number has been rising steadily over the last several years, but is not included in my administrative data line. That would tilt the trend up a bit.
Likewise, there may be large errors in my estimate of illegal immigration! Now, these errors shouldn’t totally change the trend, but they may account for some of the figures we’re seeing. In particular, it’s possible that illegal immigration is substantially lower, and likewise that associated emigration is lower. I assume fairly high levels of emigration for this population. If border patrol is actually apprehending, say, 75% of would-be border-crossers, instead of the under 50% I assume, inflows could be lower. Likewise, inflows may be less correlated with apprehensions than I and other researchers assume. There’s plenty of room for error.
But without a clear resolution to that error, this inconsistency in the data remains a great frustration.
To be honest though, my main plan here wasn’t to resolve it. My main plan was to show off that you can now embed Datawrapper charts into Medium directly! Yippee! Thanks Datawrapper!
Check out my Podcast about the history of American migration.
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I’m a graduate of the George Washington University’s Elliott School with an MA in International Trade and Investment Policy, and an economist at USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service. I like to learn about migration, the cotton industry, airplanes, trade policy, space, Africa, and faith. I’m married to a kickass Kentucky woman named Ruth.
My posts are not endorsed by and do not in any way represent the opinions of the United States government or any branch, department, agency, or division of it. My writing represents exclusively my own opinions. I did not receive any financial support or remuneration from any party for this research. More’s the pity.
