Immigration is changing much more than the immigration debate

Mexican immigration has rebounded some as the U.S. economy has improved, but it’s still well below its early-2000s peak, and few experts expect it ever to rebound fully. “It’s now history,” Dowell Myers, a University of Southern California demographer, said of the immigration wave of the early 2000s. “It’s the peak level of Latino migration.”

As immigration from Mexico has been falling, migration from other countries has continued to rise. In the past five years, the number of new immigrants (those in the country less than a year) from China has risen 37 percent, to more than 70,000. Immigration from India and other Asian countries is also increasing, though at a more modest rate.

As a result, Asia has surpassed Latin America as the dominant source of new immigrants to the U.S. Asia accounted for 45 percent of all new immigrants in 2012, compared to 34 percent for Latin America. Mexico is still the largest single country of origin for new immigrants, but its lead is shrinking fast: Mexico accounts for 14 percent of all new immigrants, down from 45 percent in 2000. India, meanwhile, now accounts for 12 percent, and China for 10 percent.3