What is the current number of naturalized US citizens who were born abroad?
Executive summary
There are about 26 million naturalized U.S. citizens residing in the United States as of 2024, which Congress Research Service reports as “approximately 26 million naturalized U.S. citizens” and that this group represented about 51% of the foreign‑born population [1]. Official naturalization flows and annual totals are reported by DHS/OHSS and USCIS, but the precise, current snapshot count by birth‑abroad status beyond that 26 million figure is not provided in the available documents [2] [3].
1. What the headline numbers in reporting actually say
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) summary cited in recent reporting gives a headline: roughly 26 million naturalized U.S. citizens living in the country in 2024, and that naturalized citizens made up about half of the foreign‑born population [1]. USCIS’s naturalization statistics emphasize production (new citizens per year) and geography — for example, a multi‑year total of more than 2.6 million new citizens over a recent three‑year span and state distribution for FY2024 — but do not provide a single, continuously updated “number of naturalized citizens born abroad” beyond the CRS snapshot [3]. DHS/OHSS reports and the OHSS Naturalizations Annual Flow Report catalogue annual grants and trends but are framed as flows (new naturalizations) rather than a running stock count of all living naturalized citizens by place of birth [4] [2].
2. Why one common statistic—“naturalized citizens born abroad”—is slippery
“Naturalized” by definition means foreign‑born people who became U.S. citizens; CRS, USCIS and DHS materials treat naturalized citizens as part of the foreign‑born population and report both flows and stocks in different ways [1] [3] [2]. CRS reports the stock of naturalized citizens (about 26 million) but does not publish a separate figure labeled “naturalized citizens who were born abroad” distinct from that stock — because naturalization itself presupposes foreign birth in the population under discussion [1]. Annual flow reports provide counts of people naturalized in a given year but not a consolidated, up‑to‑the‑minute all‑living total broken down by birth location in the sources here [2] [3].
3. How agencies present the data and what they track
USCIS focuses on case production and naturalization applications pending and completed — for example, the agency notes pending applications and FY production levels, and its statistics page lists naturalizations by state and age categories [3]. CRS complements that with analysis and a 2024 stock estimate [1]. DHS/OHSS compiles annual flow reports that analyze which countries naturalized people were born in and regional shares, but those are annual flows rather than the complete living stock [2] [4].
4. What the available sources do not say
Available sources do not mention a single, definitive up‑to‑date count labeled “current number of naturalized U.S. citizens who were born abroad” beyond CRS’s 26 million aggregate stock of naturalized citizens in 2024 [1]. They also do not provide an authoritative day‑of‑today figure that net‑subtracts denaturalizations, expatriations, deaths, and new naturalizations to produce a continuously updated living total in the provided extracts [1] [2] [3].
5. Practical takeaways and where to look next
If you need a precise current stock figure: use the CRS stock estimate (about 26 million naturalized citizens in 2024) as the best available headline in these documents, and consult USCIS and DHS annual naturalization reports for recent yearly additions and geographic breakdowns [1] [3] [2]. For legal definitions and special cases (children born abroad to U.S. parents, acquisition at birth vs. naturalization), consult State Department guidance and the INA texts cited by the Department of State and U.S. Code [5] [6]. If you require a live, continuously reconciled count that factors in denaturalizations and other adjustments, available sources here do not provide that, and you would need to request or derive it from agency microdata or more detailed DHS/USCIS demographic tables not included in the cited documents [1] [2] [3].