According to a recent report by the Pew Research Center, there were an estimated 10.5 million unauthorised immigrants in the US in 2021, up slightly from 10.2 million in 2019. However, the unauthorised immigrant population in Texas remained relatively stable at 1.6 million.
Texas remains the state with the second-highest undocumented population in the US, behind California, which reported 1.9 million unauthorised immigrants in 2021.
The Centre notes that the report does not reflect changes in migrant apprehensions and deportations along the US-Mexico border, which began to increase in March 2021 and have since reached historic highs.
Despite no significant change in the total number of immigrants recorded in the study, the study points out that the demographics and geographic concentrations of unauthorised immigrants have changed.
While Mexico remains the most common country of origin for unauthorised immigrants in the US, the study found that the share of unauthorised immigrants born in Mexico has declined significantly since 2017. In Texas, Mexican-born unauthorised immigrants fell from 73 per cent of unauthorised immigrants in 2016 to 55 per cent in 2021.
The researchers note that while overall migration from Mexico to the US has declined, pathways to legal immigration from Mexico and other countries have expanded.
Nearly every other region of the world – including sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Europe, South America and Central America – has seen an increase in unauthorised migration to the US, with the largest increases coming from Central America and South and East Asia.
Néstor Rodriguez, a sociology professor at UT-Austin, studies various aspects of immigration. He said there’s a variety of reasons why fewer unauthorised immigrants are coming from Mexico, ranging from personal circumstances to increased job opportunities in certain regions of the country.
“Fortunately for Mexicans, the job market (there) seems to be growing,” Rodriguez said. “It’s not in all areas of Mexico, but certainly in the industrial north and around Mexico City.”
Unauthorised immigrants make up 8% of the Texas workforce, second only to Nevada, according to the report’s labour force data.
As more people of different ethnicities come to the US, Rodriguez says this creates broader social networks that encourage further immigration.
Rodriguez says this creates more connections that motivate more people to come here and “join their cousins, brothers or sisters”.
Julia Gelatt, deputy director of the Migration Policy Institute’s U.S. Immigration Policy Program, said demographic shifts in areas with large immigrant populations aren’t unheard of, like the changes in New York City’s immigrant population in the past.
“A lot of cities and a lot of states in the United States have seen shifts in their immigrant enclaves over time,” Gelatt said. “Some of those shifts have been more gradual and some have been more rapid.”
California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois were the six states with the largest unauthorised immigrant populations in the nation, a consistent trend since at least 1990.
Although the states with the largest populations have remained constant, the geographic patterns of unauthorised immigrants have changed markedly. In 1990, 80% of unauthorised immigrants lived in these six states. By 2021, only 56% of unauthorised immigrants lived in these six states.
The shift in geographic trends suggests that there are likely more job opportunities and resources available in other parts of the country, Rodriguez said.
Although it can be difficult to determine trends in immigration data because unexpected factors such as natural disasters or changes in government stability can have a large impact on immigration, Gelatt said recent data may indicate the beginning of new migration patterns.
“In the 1990s and early 2000s, Mexico was the big driver of growth in the unauthorised immigrant population in the US,” Gelatt said. “We may be in a new era, but … we (don’t) know yet what that will mean for migration trends.”
