The foreign-born share of the U.S. population has returned to its late-19th-century level.
Immigration during the second half of the 19th century lifted the foreign-born share of the population to 14 percent. Starting in the 1910s, however, immigration to the United States fell precipitously, and the foreign-born share of the population reached a historic low of 4.7 percent in 1970. The foreign-born fraction of the population rose steadily from 1970 to its 2017 level of 13.7 percent.