D’Vera Cohn, Pew Research Center
September 21, 2018

News headlines are filled with stories about young unauthorized, immigrant Dreamers, war-zone refugees, and temporary digital workers from India – but how do they fit into the bigger picture of immigration to the U.S.? The number of immigrants living here is at a record high, but there are recent changes in where they come from, who they are and how they get here. Immigration has risen, fallen and risen again throughout U.S. history. Public attitudes about immigrants, and government policies toward them, also have shifted over time. D’Vera Cohn will describe immigration’s role in reshaping the U.S. population, paint a portrait of the nation’s immigrants today, and look ahead to their possible future.

D’Vera Cohn is a senior writer and editor at Pew Research Center, where she studies and writes about demographics and immigration in the United States. Cohn was a Washington Post reporter for 21 years, mainly writing about demographics, and was the newspaper’s lead reporter for the 2000 census. Before joining Pew Research Center, she served as a consultant and freelance writer for the Brookings Institution and Population Reference Bureau. She is an author of studies on unauthorized immigrants, migration between the U.S. and Mexico, and U.S. population projections. Cohn manages Pew Research Center’s @allthingscensus Twitter account.

Supported by Urban Enhancement Trust Fund and Sandia National Labs