In 2024, 79% of all U.S. Latinos were U.S. citizens, up from 71% in 2000. Two-thirds (67%) are U.S. citizens by birth, including people born in the U.S. and its territories (e.g., Puerto Rico) plus people born abroad to American parents. About 13% of Latinos are immigrants who have become naturalized U.S. citizens.
When it comes to Hispanic immigrants, Pew Research Center estimates that 59% are lawful immigrants while 41% are unauthorized immigrants, based on data from 2023. This is larger than the share of all U.S. immigrants. immigrants who are unauthorized (27%).
Looked at another way, Latino unauthorized immigrants represented 14% of all U.S. Latinos in 2023. This is larger than unauthorized immigrants’ share (4%) of the U.S. population.
US Latinos trace their roots to many countries
Hispanics have family roots in the countries of Latin America and Spain. But while Hispanics come from many countries, a few groups made up most of the population in 2024:
Mexicans are the largest single group. The roughly 40 million people of Mexican origin in the U.S. represented 57% of the nation’s Hispanic population in 2024.
At 6.1 million, people of Puerto Rican origin are the next largest group in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. An additional 3.2 million Hispanics lived in Puerto Rico last year.
Eight other Hispanic origin groups have 1 million or more people: Cubans, Salvadorans, Dominicans, Guatemalans, Colombians, Hondurans, Venezuelans and Ecuadorians.
Spaniards accounted for nearly 1 million U.S. Hispanics.Other Latino origin groups are smaller but have also seen fast growth since 2019:
Venezuelans are the fastest-growing Hispanic origin group, more than doubling in number between 2019 and 2024.
The number of Ecuadorians increased by 48%, the second-fastest growth rate.
Chileans (+47%), Colombians (+43%) and Nicaraguans (+41%) all grew rapidly as well.
By contrast, the number of people of Mexican or Puerto Rican origin grew much more slowly during the same period (+5% for each group).
