The Morning: The largest immigration surge in U.S. history

December 11, 2024

Good morning. We’re covering the scale of recent immigration — as well as Syria’s prisons, the C.E.O. killing suspect and Saudi Arabia.

A long, serpentine line of people waiting to board a white passenger bus snakes its way down a steep concrete embankment and along a riverbank.

In El Paso in 2022. Paul Ratje for The New York Times

An unprecedented surge

My colleagues and I worked with government officials and outside experts in recent weeks to analyze the magnitude of the recent immigration surge in the United States. We published the results of that analysis this morning.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll give you seven highlights, with help from charts by Albert Sun, a graphics editor at The Times.

1. The immigration surge since 2021 has been the largest in U.S. history, surpassing even the levels of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Total net migration — the number of people coming to the country minus the number leaving — will likely exceed eight million people over the past four years, government statistics suggest. That number includes both legal and illegal immigration.

Never before has annual net migration been close to two million for an extended period, according to data from the Census Bureau and the Congressional Budget Office.

2. Even after adjusting for today’s larger population, the surge is slightly larger than that during the peak years of Ellis Island traffic, when millions of Europeans came to the United States. This chart tells that story:

A bar chart showing the average annual change in the foreign-born population as a share of the total U.S. population. The change is high in the 1850s with 0.6% of the total population. It doesn’t reach a similar share again until the period from 2020 to 2023.

Source: Analysis of data from the Congressional Budget Office and U.S. Census Bureau

3. The share of the U.S. population born in another country has reached a record high as a result. That share hit 15.2 percent in the summer of 2023 (and continued rising over the past 18 months). The previous high of 14.8 percent occurred in 1890, and the share remained high for decades afterward.

It began to decline after the passage of a tough immigration law in 1924. That restrictive era lasted until 1965, when a new law expanded immigration. (On a recent episode of “The Daily,” Michael Barbaro and I told the story of that 1965 law and its unintended consequences.)

A line chart showing that the U.S. foreign-born population has reached a high of 15.2 percent. In 1850 the share is below 10 percent, then it grows to just under 15 percent by 1890, stays high until 1920 and then declines to below 5 percent in 1970.

Source: Analysis of data from the Congressional Budget Office and U.S. Census Bureau

4. President Biden’s welcoming immigration policy has been the main reason for the recent surge. During his 2020 campaign, Biden encouraged more people to come to the U.S., and he loosened several policies after taking office.

Biden administration officials sometimes argue that outside events, such as the turmoil in Haiti, Ukraine and Venezuela, have been the main cause of the surge, and those events did play a role. But the sharp decline of migration levels since this past summer — when Biden tightened the rules — indicates that the administration’s policies were the biggest factor:

A bar chart showing the number of encounters with the U.S. Border Patrol along the southwest border. The number is mostly below 100,000 until early 2021, when it shoots up to around 200,000. In 2024 the number is between 100,000 and 150,000 in the first half of the year, then drops to about 50,000 after June 2024.

Source: Department of Homeland Security

5. More than half of net migration since 2021 has been among people who entered the country illegally. Of the roughly eight million net migrants who came to the U.S. over the past four years, about five million — or 62 percent — were unauthorized, according to an estimate by Goldman Sachs.

6. The unprecedented scale of recent immigration helps explain why the issue played such a big role in the 2024 election. Polls showed that the sharp rise in immigration was unpopular with most Americans, especially among working-class voters, some of whom complained of strained social services, crowded schools and increased homelessness.

The issue appears to have been Kamala Harris’s second biggest vulnerability, after only the economy. Donald Trump made striking gains near the border in Texas, winning six counties along the Rio Grande that he lost badly only eight years ago. And Democrats who outpaced Harris and won tough congressional races — in Arizona, Michigan, Ohio, New York and elsewhere — often criticized Biden’s immigration policies.

7. The recent immigration surge has probably ended. Trump has promised to impose even tougher border rules next year than Biden recently imposed. Trump also campaigned on a plan to deport millions of immigrants who entered the country illegally.

It remains unclear how far Trump will go and whether his plan will remain popular once he begins to implement it. Either way, the pace at which immigrants enter the U.S. has already fallen significantly from the peak levels of 2022 and 2023 and may continue to fall after Trump takes office. Historically, in both the U.S. and other countries, very high levels of immigration often cause a political backlash that leads to new restrictions.

Our full story includes more details, including an explanation of why experts believe recent census numbers underestimate the size of the immigration surge.

Related: Democratic governors are resisting parts of Trump’s deportation agenda. But they’re offering to help him enact stricter border control and deport people convicted of crimes.

THE LATEST NEWS

Syria

People in a dark room, examining white plastic body bags with cellphone torches.

At a Damascus prison morgue. Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

Syrians are searching prisons for disappeared family members. Some are finding their bodies.
The rebels who overthrew Syria’s Assad government vowed to punish officials implicated in torture, but promised an amnesty for rank-and-file soldiers.
Israel destroyed Syria’s navy, officials said. Israeli forces have bombed military sites and equipment across the country, to restrict the capabilities of whoever leads it next.
A Times reporter toured Assad’s mountaintop palace. Looters had been there first.

C.E.O. Shooting

Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare C.E.O., was remembered at a private funeral in his Minnesota hometown as a devoted father to his two sons. He was born to a working-class family and grew up in rural Iowa. Read about his life.
A judge denied bail for Luigi Mangione, the man charged in the killing. Mangione shouted and struggled with the police as they led him into the hearing.
The Mangiones are known as a force in Baltimore politics.

Trump Administration

Trump named Andrew Ferguson to lead the Federal Trade Commission, replacing Lina Khan. Ferguson supports cracking down on big tech companies but opposes regulating A.I.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to restrict high-fructose corn syrup, vegetable oils and processed foods. Doing so might hurt workers in Trump-friendly areas.
Trump chose Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox host and his son Don Jr.’s fiancée, to be the U.S. ambassador to Greece. The announcement came after reports that Don Jr. was seen with another woman.
Wall Street is thrilled about Trump’s win, seeing it as a boon to business. Even bankers who opposed him, like Jamie Dimon, are celebrating.
Trump made expansive campaign promises on immigration, spending and foreign policy. Many observers doubt he’ll achieve his biggest goals, Peter Baker writes.

MORNING READS

Two nuns behind metal bars in a Spanish monastery.

In Burgos, Spain. Ana Maria Arevalo Gosen for The New York Times

The Great Read: These nuns were excommunicated. But they won’t leave their convents.

Debilitating: Back pain is one of the most common health problems nationwide.

Homes crisis: The U.S. has a major housing shortage. It may not improve next year.

In New York: See our critics’ favorite new restaurants of 2024 as well as their favorite dishes in the city.

Lives Lived: Shuntaro Tanikawa was Japan’s most popular poet for more than half a century — and the translator of the “Peanuts” comic strip. He died at 92.

SPORTS

Soccer: Saudi Arabia is expected to win the bid to host the men’s 2034 World Cup today, and critics say the sport’s governing body has rigged the vote for the Saudis. Read our investigation.

M.L.B.: The New York Yankees agreed to an eight-year, $218 million contract with the pitcher Max Fried, making a splash just two days after Juan Soto left for the Mets.

College basketball: AJ Dybantsa, the nation’s No. 1 recruit, will play at B.Y.U. He is the highest-rated prospect in the program’s history.

ARTS AND IDEAS

A house with a garden and is shown under an enormous hangar.

On set. Federico Rios for The New York Times

Hollywood has long tried to adapt “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” the 1967 novel that helped Gabriel García Márquez win the Nobel Prize. But he always refused, insisting that his novel, in which the real and fantastical converge, could never be rendered onscreen.

That’s changed. Netflix has made the book into a series, not a film, and used special effects to capture its magical realism. See behind the scenes.

An unprecedented surge

THE LATEST NEWS

MORNING READS

SPORTS

ARTS AND IDEAS

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