According to research by the Pew Research Center, approximately 4.6 million Black individuals in the United States — or roughly one in every ten — are immigrants, and that number is expected to more than double to 9.5 million by 2060.
Community surveys were used to collect Census data from 2006 to 2019, which was used to calculate the results of the study, which was released on Thursday.
Mark Lopez, director of race and ethnicity research at Pew Research Center and co-author of the study, said, “The nation’s immigrant population has been, to some extent, predominantly driven by trends from Latin America and Asia.”
African and particularly Black immigration trends, on the other hand, have become an increasingly important part of the story of the nation’s immigrant population as a whole.”
Furthermore, Lopez pointed out that, in addition to the approximately 10% of Black immigrants, an additional 9 percent of Black people are second-generation and have at least one foreign-born parent, indicating that “the immigrant experience is not dissimilar from the daily life experiences of approximately 1 in 5 Black Americans today.”
According to the survey, the states with the greatest number of Black immigrants in 2019 were New York (approximately 900,000) and Florida (about 800,000).
This analysis is part of a larger research agenda to better comprehend the variety of our country, especially the uniqueness of our Black community, Lopez explained.
According to Abraham Paulos, deputy director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, which is based in Brooklyn, Black immigrants and those who have been in the United States for a longer period of time suffer many of the same issues.
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According to Paulos, “I believe that everything that is happening in Black America is also happening to Black immigrants.” He cited America’s long history of discrimination in the criminal justice system, police brutality, and housing disparity as examples.
Many of the people represented by BAJI are also attempting to organize and campaign for better working conditions at the same time.
According to the findings of the study, the majority of Black immigrants came from Jamaica (approximately 760,000) and Haiti (approximately 700,000) between 2000 and 2019. Many of them, according to Paulos, experienced comparatively more difficult acclimation periods, as well as more discrimination, than their counterparts from other countries.
Thousands of Haitian asylum seekers tented under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, during the month of September. Images of Customs and Border Patrol officials using horses to push back migrants crossing the Rio Grande into the United States drew widespread condemnation, and the Biden administration was forced to apologize.
In addition, a group of Haitian migrants filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration in December, alleging that they were mistreated during the event.
“Haiti is a fantastic example,” Paulos stated emphatically. “I believe that the Haitian immigrant is the most appropriate example to use in order to gain some insight into how Black Americans are treated by the immigration apparatus.”
