What does the DHS Yearbook of Immigration Statistics report as the total immigrant admissions for fiscal years 2016–2020?

1. What the Yearbook is and what “total immigrant admissions” can mean

The Yearbook of Immigration Statistics is a compendium of tables published by DHS’s Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) that breaks immigration activity into categories — lawful permanent residents (green card holders), nonimmigrant admissions (temporary visitors), refugees and asylees, naturalizations, and enforcement actions — and makes clear that some Yearbook tables count admissions at ports of entry while others record status adjustments, creating multiple “totals” depending on the table and definition used ^{[1] [2] [5]}. The Yearbook’s architecture therefore means any “total immigrant admissions” question requires specifying whether the interest is in total LPRs admitted, total nonimmigrant admissions, total legal immigrants (new arrivals plus adjustments), or some combined figure; DHS structures its tables so researchers can assemble those figures, but the precise number cited varies with the chosen definition ^{[1] [6]}.

2. The one confirmed Yearbook-derived total available in the supplied reporting

Among the excerpts provided, one secondary source (Wikipedia) reports that “according to the 2016 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, the United States admitted a total of 1.18 million legal immigrants” and breaks that into roughly 618,000 new arrivals and 565,000 status adjustments — a figure explicitly attributed to the Yearbook in that snippet ^[3]. That citation in the supplied material is the only direct numeric Yearbook total for FY2016–2020 present in the search results made available here, so it is the only FY2016–2020 total that can be reported with sourcing from the supplied items ^[3].

3. Why the provided material is insufficient to list FY2017–FY2020 totals verbatim

The other supplied search hits point to the Yearbook landing pages for individual years (including Yearbook 2020 and Yearbook 2022) and to DHS/OHSS portals that host the tables, and they explain how the Yearbook compiles and standardizes immigration data, but the snippets do not extract the numeric annual totals for FY2017, FY2018, FY2019, or FY2020 ^{[4] [7] [2]}. Without the specific table rows or PDF page extracts for each fiscal year from those Yearbook publications in the provided reporting, asserting precise yearly totals for 2017–2020 would exceed what the sourced material supports ^{[7] [4]}.

4. How to get the authoritative year-by-year totals and why definitions matter

To obtain the authoritative totals for FY2016–FY2020, the Yearbook tables on the OHSS/DHS website should be consulted directly: the Yearbook pages and the FY2020 PDF are cited among the search results and host the tables that record LPRs, nonimmigrant admissions, adjustments of status, refugees, and combined tallies ^{[4] [8] [7]}. Researchers must choose the Yearbook table that matches their intended definition of “total immigrant admissions” (for example, “Persons Obtaining Lawful Permanent Resident Status” versus “Total Nonimmigrant Admissions” versus “legal immigrants = new arrivals + adjustments”) because DHS’s reporting separates arrivals at ports of entry from status adjustments and releases final annual data in the Yearbook itself ^{[6] [5]}.

5. Bottom line and transparency about limits in the supplied reporting

The material provided here allows a sourced statement that the 2016 Yearbook is reported to show about 1.18 million legal immigrants in FY2016 (attributed in the supplied excerpt) but does not include the explicit Yearbook tabulations for FY2017–FY2020 needed to list those totals with citation; the Yearbook site and the FY2020 Yearbook PDF are the correct primary sources to pull those year-by-year numbers and to resolve definitional choices ^{[3] [4] [8]}. Any definitive year-by-year table for FY2016–2020 must therefore be drawn from the Yearbook tables on the OHSS/DHS site rather than from the limited snippets provided above ^{[2] [7]}.