Illegal Immigration Figures in New York

Illegal immigrants accounted for 3.8 percent of the New York population, or about 750,000 people in 2012, according to the Pew Research Center.

More than one in five residents of the state are immigrants. The overall foreign-born share of New York’s population increased from nearly 16 percent in 1990 to more than 22 percent in 2011, the U.S. Census Bureau reports.

The American Immigration Council noted that unauthorized immigrants contributed some $1.1 billion in state and local taxes in 2012, including state income taxes, property taxes and sales taxes, according to a report from the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy. Legal status for these immigrants would increase their state and local tax input to more than $1.3 billion.

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There were more than 82,000 foreign students in New York in the 2011-2012 academic year. They contributed $2.6 billion to the state’s economy with tuition fees and living expenses.

An analysis by the Perryman Group found that the state would have lost more than $28 billion in economic activity if illegal immigrants were removed from New York in 2008.

The Latino and Asian population added tens of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs to the state’s economy through entrepreneurs and consumers, the American Immigration Council noted.

Latinos provided a total of $85.2 billion in buying power to New York in 2012, an increase of 258.6 percent since 1990. Asian purchasing power was $63.3 billion, an increase of 417.3 percent since 1990, according to a University of Georgia study.

In New York City, only 16 percent of the foreign population came from Europe as opposed to 64 percent in 1970, according to the Department of City Planning.

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Immigrants from the Dominican Republic represent the largest immigrant group in the city, but they have only increased 3 percent since 2000. The Mexican immigrant population increased by 52 percent and the Chinese grew by nearly 34 percent.

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