Immigration: Today

Mexican immigrants, along with their Mexican American descendants, occupy a unique place in the story of U.S. immigration. They are known by many different names, come from divergent origins, and took widely different paths to becoming part of the United States.

Since claiming the top spot among all immigrant groups in the 1980 census, the Mexican immigrant population in the United States has continued to outsize other immigrant groups. In 2008, there were 11.4 million Mexican immigrants in the United States, accounting for 30.1 percent of all U.S. immigrants and 10 percent of all Mexicans. Over half of all Mexican immigrants reside in the United States illegally.

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What Are the Solutions to Illegal Immigration in America?

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Since 1990, the number of Central American immigrants in the United States has nearly tripled. This immigrant population grew faster than any other region-of-origin population from Latin America between 2000 and 2010. Central American immigrants' share of the total immigrant population in the United States has also grown steadily for the past five decades, from less than 1 percent in 1960 to almost 8 percent in 2011.