the Influx of immigrants The U.S. entry into 2024 has pushed the population to its highest rate of increase in 23 years, with the country's population surpassing 340 million, according to a report released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Between 2023 and 2024, the US population grew by about 1%, the highest increase since 2001. In contrast, the 0.2% growth rate in 2021 was a record low at the height of pandemic restrictions on travel to the US, according to population estimates. Annual. displays.
This year, immigration increased by about 2.8 million people, partly due to a new counting method that adds people admitted on humanitarian grounds.
Net international migration, which the Census Bureau says refers to any change in residency across U.S. borders, has been a critical component of the change driving growth in the resident population.
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This photo shows migrants at the southern border encountered in Arizona. (US Border Patrol)
Net international migration accounted for 84% of the increase in the number of people in the country, which amounted to 3.3 million people last year.
This increase reflects the continuing trend of rising international migration, with a net increase of 1.7 million in 2022 and 2.3 million in 2023.
“Improving the integration of federal data sources on immigration has strengthened the methodology of our estimates,” said Christine Hartley, assistant chief of the Estimates and Projections Division. “With this update, we can better understand how the recent increase in international migration is impacting the country’s overall population growth.”
Last year, births outnumbered deaths in the United States by about 519,000, which was an increase from the historic low of 146,000 in 2021, but still well below the highs of previous decades.
A Haitian migrant who has been approved for parole on humanitarian grounds cheers as he boards a bus carrying migrants to the United States at the Senda de Vida shelter on August 30, 2022, in Reynosa, Mexico. (Michael Nigro/Getty Images)
The US Census Bureau did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment on the report.
Along with immigration statistics, the report showed that the South was the fastest-growing region in the United States in 2024, adding 1.8 million people, a larger population than all other regions combined.
Texas saw the largest increase with 562,941 new residents, followed by Florida which gained 467,347 new residents.
Washington, D.C., had the fastest growth rate in the country at 2.2%.
Migrants wait in line to enter a shelter set up by authorities for migrants as migrants wait for an appointment through US Customs and Border Protection in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, May 23, 2023. (Christian Torres Chavez/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Some states — Mississippi, Vermont and West Virginia — lost population in 2024, albeit by small amounts ranging from 127 to 516 people.
Those included in this year's international migration estimates are a group of people who entered the United States via… Biden administration Humane parole, which Republicans have sharply criticized.
More than 5.8 million people were admitted under various humanitarian policies from 2021 to 2024, the Washington, D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute reported last week.
But determining the number of new immigrants is a difficult aspect of population estimates in the United States.
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The bureau's annual calculations of the number of immigrants entering the United States in the 2020s were far lower than the numbers reported by other federal agencies, such as the Congressional Budget Office. The Census Bureau estimates that 1.1 million immigrants entered the United States in 2023, while the Congressional Budget Office's estimate was 3.3 million people.
With the revised method, last year's immigration figures are now recalculated by the Census Bureau to approximately 2.3 million people, or 1.1 million additional people.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
