What percentage of illegal immigrants entering the country, are legitimately illegals versus lawful entries?
Executive summary
Recent government and research estimates put the unauthorized (commonly called “illegal”) immigrant population in the United States in the low‑to‑mid tens of millions, meaning that roughly one in four to one in five foreign‑born residents lack full lawful status while the majority of immigrants reside lawfully; precise percentages vary by dataset and methodology [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].
1. The core numbers: what major sources report
Pew’s work estimates the unauthorized population at about 10.5 million in 2021 (with methodological adjustments for undercounts) and notes that year‑to‑year changes reflect arrivals, departures, deaths and status changes rather than a single steady flow [1]. The Migration Policy Institute’s modeled estimate of unauthorized immigrants is roughly 11.4 million, using pooled Census and survey data with imputations for legal status [2]. A separate Pew report for 2023 puts a higher estimate — about 14 million unauthorized immigrants — driven in part by post‑pandemic changes in migration and administrative counts [3]. Those ranges (≈10.5–14 million) are the basis for the share calculations below [1] [2] [3].
2. Translating counts into percentages of the foreign‑born population
Multiple sources report that most foreign‑born people in the U.S. reside lawfully: one summary finds lawful immigrants comprise roughly 68–73 percent of the foreign‑born population (PBS summarizes about 49% naturalized and 19% lawful permanent residents, totaling ~68%, while another compendium reports 73% lawful) [4] [5]. Placing the 10.5–14 million unauthorized estimates alongside those lawful shares implies that unauthorized people represent roughly 20–32 percent of the U.S. foreign‑born population depending on which population totals and unauthorized estimate are used [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].
3. Why ranges, not a single number — measurement and definitional issues
Estimating the unauthorized population is methodologically difficult: residual methods combine administrative counts of lawful entries with survey and census undercounts and visa‑overstay tabulations, and different teams make different adjustments for missed people, parolees, TPS/DACA recipients and pending asylum applicants [6] [2]. That is why respected authorities (Pew, MPI, DHS compilations) produce different but overlapping estimates rather than an exact percent [1] [2] [7] [6].
4. Flow vs. stock: arrivals don’t equal present unauthorized population
Counts of border encounters, releases and parole entries reflect flows into the country, but the stock of unauthorized residents equals cumulative arrivals minus those who left, were removed, died or adjusted to lawful status; researchers caution that adding new arrivals to a prior stock without accounting for exits is misleading [1] [6]. Administrative enforcement and removals change the composition too: DHS enforcement tables and CBO modeling show substantial removals and voluntary departures in some years, which affects both short‑term flow statistics and the longer‑term unauthorized population [7] [8].
5. What a direct answer looks like, with caveats
Using mainstream estimates from Pew, MPI and related DHS analyses, the unauthorized population is most plausibly in the 10–14 million range; compared with the total foreign‑born population this implies that approximately 20–32 percent of foreign‑born residents are unauthorized while roughly 68–80 percent are lawful (naturalized, lawful permanent residents, temporary lawful admissions, etc.) — the exact percentage depends on which year, population total and methodology one uses [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. This is a stock‑level statement about residents; it should not be conflated with the share of “entries” in a given year that are unauthorized, which requires separate flow data and different measurement [1] [7].
6. Competing estimates and political claims
Advocacy and policy groups produce much higher or lower counts — for example, non‑governmental trackers sometimes claim substantially larger unauthorized populations or project different net flows — illustrating how choice of data and definitions can map to political agendas; independent reviewers stress reliance on peer‑reviewed or government methods to avoid such divergence [9] [3] [6]. Where sources differ, the differences frequently trace back to how they treat parolees, recent releases at the border, visa overstays and undercount adjustments [3] [2] [6].