Black Lives Matter and that includes the lives of Black immigrants. Although the narrative around immigration usually focuses on Latinx people crossing the southern border from countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, or Honduras, black immigrants from these countries, from the Caribbean, and from Africa comprise a significant and growing part of the story of immigration in the United States.
In October 2017, the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) initiated a study to map the stateless population in the United States. This study sought to:
This report describes a unique methodology to produce estimates and set forth the characteristics of US residents who are potentially stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness.
This paper provides estimates on “essential” immigrant workers in New York State. These workers play a central role in safeguarding and sustaining state residents during the COVID-19 pandemic, often at great risk to their health and that of their families. Based on estimates drawn from 2018 US Census data, the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) estimates that 1.8 million immigrants work in jobs in the “essential businesses” identified by New York State. These businesses fall into 10 categories that meet the health, infrastructure, manufacturing, service, food, safety, and other needs of state residents. The majority of the New York foreign-born essential workers – 1.04 million – are naturalized citizens, 458,400 are legal noncitizens (mostly lawful permanent residents or LPRs), and 342,100 are undocumented.
This paper presents estimates of the undocumented population residing in the United States in 2018. Since 2010, the total undocumented population in the United States has declined because large numbers of undocumented residents returned to Mexico. From 2010 to 2018, a total of 2.6 million Mexican nationals left the US undocumented population; about 1.1 million, or 45 percent of them, returned to Mexico voluntarily. Additional findings include the following:
This report describes a unique methodology to produce estimates and set forth the characteristics of US residents who are potentially stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness. It also lifts up the voices and challenges of stateless persons, and outlines steps to reduce statelessness and to safeguard the rights of stateless persons in the United States.
As part of the study, CMS developed extensive, well-documented profiles of non-US citizen residents who are potentially stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness. It then used these profiles to query American Community Survey data in order to develop provisional estimates and determine the characteristics of these populations.
These three tables show detailed information about the overstay population residing in the United States in 2017. The tables augment the report on overstays released by CMS on April 24, 2019.