During his State of the Union speech, President Trump will tout his plan for draconian restrictions on legal immigrants. Supporters, like House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R‑VA), justify the plan by claiming that America is “by far the most generous nation in the world for legal immigration.” Not only is “by far” clearly false, but when you consider its wealth, America is already among the least generous to immigrants around the world.
The United States ranks in the bottom third of wealthy countries in terms of net new immigration as a share of total population from 2015 to 2017 as well as total foreign-born residents as a share of total population, according to figures from the United Nations. Trump’s plan would make America even more closed than it already is.
The United Nations data contains information on the foreign-born populations in all countries (or semi-independent provinces) around the world.* U.S. immigration is decidedly unimpressive compared to all countries. Although America does have the highest total number of foreign-born residents in the world, a fair comparison requires controlling for the size of its current population. After all, a million new people entering India with a population of 1.3 billion would have very different effects than a million new people entering Estonia with a population of 1.3 million.
With this in mind, it is clear that America is nowhere near “the most generous country in the world” on immigration. Of the 232 jurisdictions that the UN includes, America ranks just 64th overall. Focusing on the rate of new immigrants as a share of total population, the United States had only the 49th highest net immigration rate from 2015 to 2017 (inflows minus outflows of foreign residents divided by total population). This places the United States rank in the 72nd and 79th percentiles in the world, respectively.