Protest in Los Angeles: How many illegal migrants live in US? How many of them are Indians?

After US President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of 300 National Guardsmen in Los Angeles and LAPD, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the California Highway Patrol pressed in helicopters to monitor the thousands of protesters who have taken to the streets defying an order to deport illegal migrants, the moot question is how many of such migrants are living in the US? The number of unathorised people living in the US varies from time to time and source to source, a rough estimate suggests it is in the range of 10 to 13 million. The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) has put an estimated number of 13.7 million unauthorised immigrants in mid-2023 on their official website. 

Illegal migrants' number surges

According to new Pew Research Center estimates based on the 2022 American Community Survey, the unauthorized immigrant population in the US grew to 11.0 million in 2022. There was a long-term downward trend from 2007 to 2019, however, it increased to 10.5 million in 2021. The centre also says that the population of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant has likely grown over the past two years. The encounters with migrants at U.S. borders reached their record high in 2022-23. On the other hand, and the number of applicants waiting for decisions on asylum claims increased by about 1 million by the end of this period. 

3% of US Population?

The Pew Research Center has also reported that approximately 500,000 new immigrants were paroled into the country through two federal programs in December 2023. Groups of people coming from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela have traditionally been considered part of the unauthorized immigrant population. Unauthorised immigrants make up 3% of the US population and 22% of the foreign-born population.

How many Indians live illegally in US?

How many Indians are living in the US with proper authorization? According to a study carried out by Pew Research Center and Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) an estimated number of  700,000 people of Indian origin lived in the US in 2022, making them the third-largest group after Mexico and El Salvador. However, the data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report 220,000 unauthorised Indians living in 2022. Indian immigrants are one of the fastest-growing groups in the US, surging from 600,000 in 1990 to 3.2 million in 2022.

On the other hand, Visa overstays by Indians have remained steady at 1.5% since 2016. The number of Indian recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has also declined from 2,600 in 2017 to 1,600 in 2024. The DACA programme protects migrants who came to the US as children.