Is the current foreign-born population in the U.S. among the highest in U.S. history at 15%, as Rep. Josh Breechen claimed?

Preliminary July 2026 data from the Current Population Survey estimates the foreign-born population – including naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents, long-term temporary visitors, and illegal immigrants – to be about 50.5 million, or about 14.7% of the total population. 

That is a decrease from the all-time high of 53.3 million immigrants living in the United States, 15.8% of the population at the time, reached in January 2025. The decline, potentially due in part to declining survey response rates, suggests that since then more immigrants have left or been deported than have migrated, which hasn’t happened since the 1930s. 

Those trends aren’t necessarily unprecedented; immigrants represented 14.8% of the population in 1890, before decreasing during the 20th century to 4.7% in 1970 and growing steadily each decade since. Prior to 1965, quota-based immigration law favored European immigrants. 

The U.S. has more immigrants than any other country.