Treatment of Noncitizens in H.R. 3200
Overview of the Noncitizen Population in the United States
Using the March 2008 Current Population Survey (CPS), the
Congressional Research Service
estimated that in the beginning of 2008 there were approximately
37.3 million foreign-born
persons in the United States.3 The foreign-born population was
comprised of approximately 15.1
million naturalized U.S. citizens4 and 22.2 million noncitizens.5
Researchers at the Pew Hispanic Center used the same data, but
adjusted the survey weights to
account for noncitizen undercounts in the survey. They also assigned
a specific immigration
status (e.g, legal permanent resident, unauthorized alien) to each
foreign-born survey
respondent, and used a methodology to estimate the illegally present
population.6 The Pew
Hispanic Center estimated that in the beginning of 2008 there were
approximately 40 million
foreign-born persons in the United States, and of the foreign-born
population, approximately 14.2
million (36%) were naturalized U.S. citizens, 12.3 million (31%)
were legal permanent residents
(LPRs), 1.4 million (4%) were temporarily in the United States
(i.e., nonimmigrants),7 and 11.9
million (30%) were estimated to be unauthorized (illegal)
residents.8 The Center for Immigration
Studies,9 using the monthly public use files of the CPS, estimated
that in the first quarter of 2009
(January/February/March), the unauthorized alien population declined
to approximately 10.8
million.10
Endnotes
3 A foreign-born resident is anyone in the United
States who was born in another country, and did not automatically
acquire U.S. citizenship at birth.
4 Under U.S. immigration law, all legal permanent
residents are potential citizens and may become so through a process
known as naturalization.
5 Since the CPS does not ask citizenship status, CRS
does not use the CPS to estimate the different noncitizen
populations (e.g., legal permanent residents, temporary workers,
unauthorized aliens).
6 Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn, A Portrait of
Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States, Pew Hispanic
Center, Washington, D.C., April 14, 2009, p. 48,
http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/107.pdf.
7 The two basic types of legal aliens are immigrants
and nonimmigrants. Immigrants are persons admitted as legal
permanent residents (LPRs) of the United States. Nonimmigrants—such
as tourists, foreign students, diplomats,
temporary agricultural workers, exchange visitors, or intracompany
business personnel—are admitted for a specific
purpose and a temporary period of time. Nonimmigrants are required
to leave the country when their visas expire,
though certain classes of nonimmigrants may adjust to LPR status if
they otherwise qualify. For more information on
the different categories of noncitizens, see CRS Report RS20916,
Immigration and Naturalization Fundamentals, by
Ruth Ellen Wasem.
8 Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn, A Portrait of
Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States, Pew Hispanic
Center, Washington, D.C., April 14, 2009, p. 3,
http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/107.pdf.
9 Steven A. Camarota and Karen Jensenius, A Shifting
Tide: Recent Trends in the Illegal Immigrant Population, Center
for Immigration Studies, Washington, D.C., July 2009,
http://cis.org/IllegalImmigration-ShiftingTide.
10 For a discussion of the differences in the
methodologies of the estimates, see CRS Report RL33874, Unauthorized
Aliens Residing in the United States: Estimates Since 1986, by Ruth
Ellen Wasem.
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