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UNITED STATES

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GENERAL DATA

Poverty rates:

12%

of the total population.

MIGRATION DATA

  • Sending county: about 9 million Americans reside abroad primarily in Mexico, India, and Germany.

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  • Destination country: about 45 million immigrants or 14% of the total population live in the US. The main countries of origin are Mexico (25%); China (6%); India (6%); Philippines (5%); and El Salvador (3%).  

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  • Host country for asylees: In 2018, there were 38,678 people recognized as political asylees.

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  • Host country for refugees: since the fiscal year 2002, the majority of refugees have come from Burma (about 177,700), Iraq (144,400), and Somalia (104,100). Texas, Washington, New York, and California resettled approximately a quarter of all refugees in the fiscal year 2019. 

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  • Country of deportation: between  2001 and 2020, 4 million migrants have been deported from the U.S. 

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  • DACA - Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals: There are about 652,880 active DACA beneficiaries of whom 80% are of Mexican origin. Almost 9% are from the Northern Triangle of Central America (El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala). In 2019, around 1.7 million people were eligible for DACA. 

IMPACT BY COVID-19

* daily data update

Hover over the country where you want to know the data.

The US is the main migratory destination in the world including for Latin American and Caribbean nationals. The US has approximately 12 million undocument migrants; most are from Latin America and the Caribbean. The geopolitical weight that US migration control measures have in the Americas is decisive. The team that collected the information for the US underscored the following concerns as background to understand the migratory dynamics within the dynamics:

  • Before the pandemic, the Trump administration had introduced some of the strictest immigration control mechanisms in modern times. Since 2019, measures taken to externalize the US border to the south have had chain repercussions, especially in Mexico and Central America that have been forced to act as "Safe Third Countries" for asylum seekers (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador). This is particularly evident in the increase in deportations, particularly to Guatemala, and the number of asylum seekers stranded on the US-Mexico border.

 

  • On March 20, 2020, a de facto state of emergency was set up for immigration issues, invoking the Public Health Service Law of 1944. This Law has allowed the government to take exceptional measures including: 1) closing and militarizing  borders; 2) denying entry to populations deemed to pose a health risk, including children and adolescents; 3) the de facto dismantling of the asylum system; and, 4) accelerating deportations to get rid of illegalized migrants and people in need of international protection. 

 

  • Immigration raids,  arrests and deportations have not stopped during the pandemic producing fear within immigrant communities. As a result, not only illegalized migrants, but all migrants, refrain from seeking health services thus putting their lives at risk, especially since many work in occupations deemed “essential” during the pandemic. 

 

  • While the overall number of detainees in ICE contracted facilities has dropped to 19,791 (as of Oct. 9, 2020) from 50,165 in FY 2019, detention facilities have served as an incubator for the spread of the virus. More than 6,400 have contracted the virus while in detention and 8 have died. Detentions, transfers between facilities, and deportations have continued throughout the pandemic contributing to the regional spread of the coronavirus. Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, El Salvador and Ecuador account for 88% of the 3171 deportation flights year-to-date August.

 

  • The United States has seen multiple forms of social activism, and actions of solidarity and resistance in support of migrant struggles. In response to the exceptional measures taken by the Trump administration, grassroots organizations and social groups have called for actions, protests, and requests for signatures on petitions to uphold the rule of law and fight to ensure the guarantee of rights for all.

 

COVID-19 cases: Latinxs disproportionately affected


As of August 2020, Latino and African-American residents of the United States have been three times as likely to become infected as their white neighbours. Latinxs between the ages of 40 and 59 have been infected at five times the rate of whites in the same age group, according data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

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STATE MEASURES

  • The aggressive emergency border control measures implemented by the Trump administration in March have continued in effect.  More than 100,000 migrants, including children and families held in hotels and overseen by private security companies, have been summarily expelled from the country under these measures. Border detentions rose from 16,162 in April to 38,347 in July (137% increase). Migrants are typically expelled without Covid-19 testing. 

 

  • Anti-migration architecture has accelerated with the implementation of new measures: the non-government Migration Policy Institute estimates that the administration has made more than 400 immigration policy changes. A separate tally by advocacy groups puts the figure closer to 1,000. 

 

  • The Trump administration maintains the suspension of the asylum program. Consequently, asylum seekers who had been waiting in Mexico for an opportunity to cross and apply for refuge, have left migrant shelters in border towns and returned to their home countries, settled in Mexico, or tried to cross into the United States without authorization. The resettlement of global UN refugees is also suspended at least until November.

For detailed information download the U.S. Record Card

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