Washington DC, February 25, 2025 — New data analysis by the American Immigration Council shows how immigrants are contributing billions of dollars to the U.S. economy, even as the Trump administration and Congress are pushing for a budget that includes unprecedented funding for mass detention and deportation.  

The Council’s analysis, which draws from 2023 census data, shows the broad ways that immigrants are helping make the United States a more prosperous and thriving country: by building housing wealth, keeping social services like Social Security and Medicare solvent, and filling in as a much-needed labor force in sectors like STEM, healthcare, and agriculture. The data also helps shed light on how mass deportation and family separation could hurt families, communities, and industries across the country.  

EXPLORE THE DATA HERE

“Immigrants help increase wealth and prosperity for all Americans. And yet the White House and Congress are considering spending billions of dollars to expand ICE, so they can detain and deport people indiscriminately, even as they cut essential social services like Medicaid and food assistance,” said Nan Wu, director of research at the American Immigration Council. “Immigrants have paid up the hard-earned tax dollars that are now going to be used to punish all Americans through a wasteful and cruel mass deportation plan.”   

Users can explore the findings through the Council’s Map the Impact interactive tool. Users can search for data showcasing immigrant contributions by state, county, metro area, and district.    

Top findings include: 

1. Mass deportation would separate millions of U.S. citizen children from their family. Some 4.1 million U.S. citizen children live with an undocumented parent.  

2. Undocumented immigrants are essential contributors to the economy. In 2023, undocumented immigrant households paid $89.8 billion in federal, state, and local taxes and held $299 billion in spending power. In total, immigrant (both legal and undocumented) households paid nearly $16.80 in every $100 tax dollars collected by federal, state, and local governments, funding a wide range of social services that benefit all Americans.   

3. Immigrants inject trillions of dollars of housing wealth in the United States. The vast majority of immigrants are not dependent on state governments to guarantee them with housing; in reality, they are putting back vast sums of money into the housing market and revitalizing neighborhoods. In 2023, immigrant households paid over $167 billion in rent in the housing market, and held over $6.6 trillion in housing wealth.  

4. Immigrants help ease key labor shortages, and are driving innovation and business creation. Almost 1 in 4 entrepreneurs in the country are immigrants. About 46 percent of the Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. Elsewhere, immigrants are helping ease the labor shortage in the healthcare industry, where nearly 16 percent of nurses and about 28 percent of health aides were immigrants in 2023. 

Reach out to the American Immigration Council to talk through top data findings for your state or community with one of experts. 

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The American Immigration Council works to strengthen America by shaping how America thinks about and acts towards immigrants and immigration and by working toward a more fair and just immigration system that opens its doors to those in need of protection and unleashes the energy and skills that immigrants bring. The Council brings together problem solvers and employs four coordinated approaches to advance change—litigation, research, legislative and administrative advocacy, and communications. In January 2022, the Council and New American Economy merged to combine a broad suite of advocacy tools to better expand and protect immigrants' rights, more fully ensure their ability to succeed economically, and help make the communities they settle in more welcoming. Follow the latest Council news and information on ImmigrationImpact.com and X @immcouncil.