By By Thomas Gryn and Amy Smith
The first U.S. census was conducted in 1790, just 14 years after the nation’s founding. But it took another 60 years before the census asked every free person who lived in the United States where they were born.
Starting with the 1850 Census and every decade since, the U.S. Census Bureau has documented changes in the size and characteristics of the foreign-born population.
The foreign-born include those who were not U.S. citizens at birth, including naturalized U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents (immigrants), temporary migrants (such as foreign-born students), humanitarian migrants (such as refugees and asylees), and unauthorized migrants.
Starting in 1920, the foreign-born share began to consistently decline, and by 1970 it accounted for only 4.7% of the population.
In 1850, the U.S. Census Board instructed U.S. marshals to ask free inhabitants to report their place of birth, identifying the state, territory or country where they were born (Figure 1).
At that time, the foreign-born population of 2.2 million — then defined as anyone born in a foreign country — made up 9.7% of the U.S. population.
Since the 1800s, the ways that surveys and censuses define and ask about nativity (whether a person was born a U.S. citizen) have undergone many changes.
Data on the foreign-born population was previously collected through a long form of the decennial census. Today, the American Community Survey (ACS) collects information about the foreign-born (Figure 2).
In addition to birthplace, the ACS also asks about citizenship status and year of entry into the United States.
Ebbs and Flows of Immigration
From 1850 to 1870, the foreign-born share of the population jumped from 9.7% to 14.4%. It continued to climb, first peaking at 14.8% in 1890 (Figure 3).
Starting in 1920, the foreign-born share began to consistently decline, and by 1970 it accounted for only 4.7% of the population.
By 2024, it had climbed to its largest number ever: 50.2 million — 14.8% of the 340.1 million total U.S. population.
Countries of Origin Changed Over Time
In 1850, nearly all (92.2%) of the foreign-born population was born in European countries (Figure 4). There was little change through the 1930s, largely because U.S. immigration policy until then used quotas that reflected national-origin representation in past census numbers.
Beginning in 1965, there was a shift to more open immigration policies, moving away from a quota-based system to one that favored family reunification, certain job skills and refugee resettlement. These changes contributed to growth in the foreign-born from countries outside Europe.
The share of the foreign-born population from Latin America increased by 10 percentage points or more each decade from 1960 to 1990, surpassing the share from European countries for the first time after 1980.
Refugee resettlement after the Vietnam War and the demand for skilled workers helped fuel robust growth in the share of the foreign-born population from Asia: up 10.4 percentage points from 8.9% in 1970 to 19.3% in 1980.
By 1990, there were more foreign-born from Asia than from Europe.
Nation’s Foreign-Born on its 250th Anniversary
Today, most of the foreign-born population is from Latin American countries (51.4%), followed by people from Asian countries (30.8%).
The foreign-born population from Europe is now the third-largest group at only 9.7% followed by the growing share from African countries at 5.9%, a significant shift from the early years of our nation’s founding. (Thomas Gryn and Amy Smith are statisticians/demographers at the Census Bureau.)
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