Immigration to U.S. Continues to Grow Despite COVID-19
By:Kevin Caffrey '23
Despite the heavily increased protocols concerning travel during the pandemic, immigration to The United States has remained largely the same. America is actually the most immigrated to country in the entire world. Over 1.66 Million people came to The U.S. in 2021 alone. Most immigrants nowadays are coming to America from Mexico, India, China, El Salvador, and The Philippines.
Mexico is the greatest contributor of immigrants to America, with over 11,000,000 people immigrating here from Mexico. Mexican immigrants make up 25% of America’s foreign population, which itself is 14% of the entire country’s population.
However, this wave of immigrants is not a new development necessarily. Indians have been flooding into America at a high rate since 2000, with their population in the states growing 69.37% in that time.
Many of these immigrants have gotten high-paying jobs already, with Indian Americans being on average the highest paid ethnicity in America. Upwards of 70% of immigrants into America speak English fluently, and over 33% have a college degree of some kind. Some economists believe that the increased flow of immigrants into America will help with the labor shortage that the nation has been suffering from since the pandemic started. The jobs that many Americans will not do are the ones that many newcomers are likely to sign up for. Currently, most immigrants work in the fields of Health Care, Manufacturing, Food, Construction, and Retail.
Ten Countries with Most Immigrants to America in the Past 4 Years:
1. Mexico
2. Cuba
3. China
4.India
5. Dominican Republic
6. Phillipines
7. Vietnam
8. El Salvador
9. Haiti
10. Jamaica