Estimating the Legal Status of Foreign-Born People: Working Paper 2021-02
Working Paper
This paper explains CBO’s methods for estimating the number of residents without legal status and imputing legal status by using individual-level data from federal surveys.
By Julia Heinzel, Rebecca Heller, and Natalie Tawil
The Congressional Budget Office recently adapted a methodology to estimate, on an annual basis, the total number of people in the United States without legal status and to assign legal status to the foreign-born population in survey data to match those annual totals. This paper describes CBO’s methodology, the analytical choices made in developing that methodology, and the sensitivity of the outcomes to alternative choices.
UPDATE: On September 9, 2021, CBO posted the data underlying the figures.
