A Wave of Immigrants to the U.S. Resurges

A strengthening U.S. economy has spurred the largest pickup in immigration since before the recession, driven by Asian newcomers and a gain in Hispanic arrivals.

The number of foreign-born people in the U.S. grew by 523,400 last year, according to the Census Bureau. That beat the previous year’s net gain of roughly 446,800 and is the biggest official jump since 2006. The numbers don’t distinguish between authorized and unauthorized immigrants.

Amarildo González entered the U.S. from Guatemala last
year. He says his two jobs pay much more than he made 
back home. Ilana Panich-Linsman for The WSJ

Asian immigrants, including Chinese students and highly skilled workers from India, fueled many of the gains.

Demand among U.S. employers for visas for skilled foreign workers—the so-called H-1B visas dominated by Indian workers—has rebounded. Businesses reached the federal cap on applications in less than a week this year; in 2012, it took three months, and in 2011, eight months, to fill all the slots.

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Nidhin Patel, 25 years old, left India for Los Angeles a year ago. Deciding he wanted to learn about film direction, he enrolled in a master’s program at California State University, Los Angeles and is studying and teaching on a student visa. He hopes to work in the U.S. once his program ends.

Indian students and engineers are coming in droves, Mr. Patel said, despite the strict visa caps. The Internet and social media are making it much easier to settle in the U.S. while staying connected with family back home.

“I never had any kind of culture shock,” Mr. Patel said. Often, Indians are “already settled [in the U.S.] before they come” thanks to Internet research.

Meanwhile, Hispanic immigration is picking up, after slowing to a trickle in recent years as weak job and home-construction markets prompted many workers—often less-educated and in the U.S. illegally—to return home.

Fully 27% of last year’s new immigrants were Hispanic, compared with about 10% in 2012 and less than 1% in 2011, census figures show. More Mexicans came to the U.S. last year than left—a notable shift after several years in which the opposite happened.

The current year’s numbers will be skewed higher by the tens of thousands of child migrants from Central America who entered the U.S. unaccompanied this spring and summer, a surge that has subsided.

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