South American Immigrants in the United States

South American immigration to the United States has been on the rise, growing three times as fast as overall U.S. immigration from 2000 to 2022, although the nearly 4 million South Americans comprised just 9 percent of all 46.2 million U.S.-based immigrants as of 2022. South Americans first began immigrating to the United States during the Cold War era, when countries such as Argentina, Chile, and Colombia experienced political upheaval, armed conflict, and economic instability. Since then, immigration from the region has continued to be driven by a mix of political, social, and economic crises, exemplified by a massive exodus of Venezuelans since conditions in their country began deteriorating in 2015.

Recently, encounters of South Americans arriving without authorization in the U.S.-Mexico border have dramatically increased, corresponding with new instability in origin countries. In fiscal year (FY) 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered Venezuelans 266,000 times at the southwest border, a more than fivefold increase over the 49,000 encounters in FY 2021 (many of these occurred at official ports of entry, often after migrants had scheduled an appointment through the CBP One app). Encounters with Colombians, while fewer, increased at an even faster rate (nearly 26-fold), from about 6,000 in FY 2021 to 160,000 in FY 2023.

This Spotlight provides information on the South American immigrant population in the United States, focusing on its size, geographic distribution, and socioeconomic characteristics.