Mexicans Drive Record Immigration Population Surge in U.S., Analysis Says

America’s immigration population has reached 42.1 million – an increase of almost 2 million from last year, driven largely by post-recession inflow from Mexicans, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by the Center for Immigration Studies, a pro-border enforcement group.

Further, immigrants now make up 13 percent of America’s population, the highest amount in 105 years, according to the analysis. The increase in 2014 was 740,000, the analysis says, based on data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, a monthly report.

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The report says the number of both legal and illegal immigrants in the country grew by 4.1 million from the second quarter of 2011 to the second quarter of 2015. Of that, 1.7 million occurred last year.

The CIS report states that immigration is back on pace for pre-recession immigration growth of 2000 to 2007, and that the 2014 to 2015 growth rate is “one of the largest single-year increases from the same quarter of the prior year since 2000.”

The Mexican population – which has become an issue of debate in the 2016 presidential race – is growing significantly as the United States emerges from a recession, according to the report. The legal and illegal Mexican population reached 12.1 million in the second quarter of 2015, a record high quarterly total.

The findings contests the prior research that net migration from Mexico has fallen to zero, according to the CIS analysis.

Further, there was a 449,000 increase in OTM, a government designation for immigrants “other than Mexicans,” coming from Latin American countries. The CIS cites information from the Department of Homeland Security that about 80 percent of illegal immigrants are from Mexico and Latin America.