Much of the discussion surrounding immigration and immigrants these days is focused on the negative: the issue of illegal immigration with roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants residing across the nation, problems surrounding the immigrant detention system, and highly contested state-level immigration legislation, to name a few examples.
It’s easy to forget, perhaps, that the majority of immigrants in the country are lawful permanent residents and US citizens. As of January 2010, an estimated 12.6 million green card holders resided in the United States, about 8.1 million of whom were eligible to naturalize as citizens.
This Spotlight takes a close look at the 2010 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:
- were granted lawful permanent residence (i.e., immigrants);
- applied for and/or were granted refugee/asylee status;
- were admitted on a temporary basis (i.e., nonimmigrants);
- acquired US citizenship (i.e., naturalized).
The Yearbook also presents information about Homeland Security’s immigration law enforcement activities during the fiscal year. Note: all yearly data is for the government’s fiscal year (October 1 through September 30). All data are from OIS unless otherwise noted.
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