Green Card Holders and Legal Immigration to the United States

 

While much of the political discussion surrounding immigration in the United States focuses on the roughly 11 million to 11.5 million unauthorized immigrants residing across the nation, border security, and highly contested state-level immigration legislation, it`s easy to forget that the majority of the country’s immigrants are lawful permanent residents and US citizens. As of January 2011, an estimated 13.1 million green card holders resided in the United States, about 8.5 million of whom were eligible to naturalize as citizens.

 

This Spotlight examines the 2011 statistics on foreign nationals admitted for and adjusted to lawful permanent residence (LPR). This Spotlight uses data from the Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, one of the most commonly used publications on US immigration statistics, published by the Department of Homeland Security`s (DHS) Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS).

The Yearbook presents inflow statistics on foreign nationals who, during a fiscal year:

 

1. were granted lawful permanent residence (i.e., immigrants);
2. applied for and/or were granted refugee/asylee status;
3. were admitted on a temporary basis (i.e., nonimmigrants);
4. acquired US citizenship (i.e., naturalized).

Ir a la nota fuente