In the United States, one in 10 Black people are immigrants, which is only expected to rise in the coming years based on data analysis from the Pew Research Center.
The analysis of data from the Census Bureau found that about 4.6 million Black people who are currently living in the country were born in a different country in 2019, which is an increase from 1980 when 800,000 Black immigrants lived in the U.S.
But by 2060, the Black immigrant population is expected to double and increase to 9.5 million in the U.S.
From the Pew Research Center:
Between 1980 and 2019, the nation’s Black population as a whole grew by 20 million, with the Black foreign-born population accounting for 19% of this growth. In future years, the Black immigrant population will account for roughly a third of the U.S. Black population’s growth through 2060, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.
The Black immigrant population is also projected to outpace the U.S.-born Black population in growth. While both groups are increasing in number, the foreign-born population is projected to grow by 90% between 2020 and 2060, while the U.S.-born population is expected to grow 29% over the same time span.
Migration from Africa has fueled the bulk of the growth of the Black foreign-born population from 2000 onward. In 2000, roughly 560,000 African-born Black immigrants lived in the U.S. By 2019, that number had more than tripled to over 1.9 million. And many of these immigrants are newer arrivals to America: 43% of African-born Black immigrants immigrated to the U.S. from 2010 to 2019, higher than the shares among all U.S. immigrants (25%) and Black immigrants from the Caribbean (21%), Central America (18%) and South America (24%) in the same time period.
Black immigrants face many of the challenges that Black people born in America face like racism. On top of that, they bump against challenges African-Americans do not have to confront, such as deportation, according to NBC News.
More from the Pew Research Center:
Some 14% of Black immigrants lived below the poverty line in 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic), a rate below that of U.S.-born Black Americans (19%) but higher than the poverty rate among the entire U.S. population (11%).
Roughly similar shares of Black immigrants and all U.S. immigrants lived below the poverty line (14% and 13%, respectively).
While those numbers may be discouraging, the data analysis also found that 31% of Black immigrants ages 25 and over have a bachelor’s degree or higher.