Immigration 101

The U.S. immigration system is complex and can be difficult to understand. These resources provide key data points, historical information, and background on hot topics in immigration. Learn the basics about immigration.

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January 3, 2018

Social scientists have concluded that immigrants are far less likely than the native-born to commit serious criminal offenses or end up behind bars. More than one hundred years of research has...

December 20, 2017

December marks the three-year anniversary of the opening of the country’s largest family detention center for non-citizen mothers and their minor children located in Dilley, Texas. Referred to as...

December 18, 2017

During its first ten months in office, the Trump administration has made aggressive immigration enforcement a priority. One of the areas in which this approach was crystalized was around so-called...

December 13, 2017

Doug Jones, a former Democratic prosecutor once considered a longshot in Republican-majority Alabama, narrowly won the state’s Senate race Tuesday evening in what may ultimately prove to be a...

November 21, 2017

Each year at Thanksgiving, Immigration Impact publishes a post about how to “talk turkey” on immigration. We’ve done it for several years to provide our readers with tips on how to talk about...

November 9, 2017

The United States Armed Forces has long valued the contributions of immigrants—from the War of 1812 to the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, U.S.-born and immigrant soldiers have fought...

November 6, 2017

It has been well established for decades that the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals by any stretch of the imagination. Yet, immigrants who have committed no violent offense are often...

November 1, 2017

Americans value diversity and family. That is why our immigration system generally reflects those values. The U.S. diversity visa lottery, which was enshrined into law in 1990, was created to...

October 23, 2017

The United States has been created by successive waves of immigration over the course of centuries. Each wave of immigrants from different parts of the world has helped to build the U.S. economy...

October 19, 2017

The Nobel Prizes, awarded annually in recognition of extraordinary achievement in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace, have once again been won by Americans who came...

June 14, 2019

Over 12.3 million Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) immigrants live in the United States, placing them among the fastest-growing racial groups in the country. Between 2010 and 2017, the...

June 13, 2019

The U.S. State Department announced a new rule last week that changes the Diversity Visa Program, a lottery system that grants 50,000 foreign nationals the opportunity to apply for an immigrant...

June 7, 2019

Applications for permanent residence and other immigration benefits are taking longer than ever to process. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency responsible for...

May 8, 2019

Each new generation of immigrants to the United States has, in time, achieved a high degree of integration into U.S. society. Whether it was immigrants from southern and eastern Europe a century...

April 26, 2019

The U.S. population is aging quickly. Baby boomers are retiring en masse and Americans are having far fewer children, on average, than any other time in our history. The median age in this country...

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