Immigration drives U.S. population growth to highest level in more than two decades

A report released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday showed that immigrants will flow into the United States in 2024 and the population growth rate will reach the highest level in 23 years. The U.S. population will exceed 340 million.

Between 2023 and 2024, the U.S. population will grow by nearly 1%, the highest growth rate since 2001. Record low display.

This year, the number of immigrants has increased by nearly 2.8 million, in part because of new statistical methods that increase the number of people arriving for humanitarian reasons.

Net international migration, defined as any change in residence across U.S. borders, is a key component in driving changes in residential population growth, the Census Bureau said.

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Last year, the country added 3.3 million people to its population, with international net migration accounting for 84%.

This increase reflects the continued growth of international migration, with a net increase of 1.7 million in 2022 and a net increase of 2.3 million in 2023.

“Improvements in the integration of federal immigration data sources enhance our estimation methods,” said Christine Hartley, assistant commissioner for estimates and forecasts. “With this update, we can better understand how the recent increase in international migration is affecting the country’s overall population growth.”

Births outnumbered deaths in the United States by nearly 519,000 last year, up from a record low of 146,000 in 2021 but still well below the highs of past decades.

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On August 30, 2022, a Haitian migrant cheered after being granted humanitarian parole at the Senda de Vida shelter in Reynosa, Mexico, as he boarded a bus carrying migrants into the United States. (Michael Nigro/Getty Images)

The U.S. Census Bureau did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the report.

In addition to immigration statistics, the report shows that the South will be the fastest-growing region in the United States by 2024, adding 1.8 million people, more residents than all other regions combined.

Texas had the largest increase of 562,941 new residents, followed by Florida with 467,347 new residents.

Washington, D.C., has the fastest growth rate in the country at 2.2%.

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On May 23, 2023, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, migrants were waiting for appointments with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and lined up to enter a shelter set up by the authorities for migrants. (Cristian Torres Chavez/Anadolu Agency, Getty Images)

Some states, including Mississippi, Vermont and West Virginia, saw population declines in 2024, albeit by smaller amounts, between 127 and 516 people.

A group of people included in this year’s international migration estimates entered the United States through the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole, a policy that has been sharply criticized by Republicans.

The Washington, D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute reported last week that more than 5.8 million people were admitted under various humanitarian policies from 2021 to 2024.

But capturing the number of new immigrants is a challenging aspect of U.S. population estimates.

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The bureau’s annual calculation of how many immigrants entered the United States in the 2020s is far lower than figures cited by other federal agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office. The Census Bureau estimates that 1.1 million immigrants will enter the United States in 2023, while the Congressional Budget Office estimates 3.3 million.

Under the revised methodology, the Census Bureau now recalculates last year’s immigration count to nearly 2.3 million, an increase of 1.1 million.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.