Estimates of the Legal Permanent Resident Population and Population Eligible to Naturalize: 2002

Nancy Rytina, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

This paper presents a method for making annual estimates of the legal permanent resident population (LPR) and population eligible to naturalize in the United States by country of origin, state of residence, year of admission, age and gender. The estimates are based primarily on administrative records from the Office of Immigration Statistics of the Department of Homeland Security. Estimates for 2002 are used to illustrate the method. Immigrant records for each year from 1973-2002 were matched with naturalization records by alien or A-number in order to isolate the LPR population that had not naturalized. This base population was then adjusted for derivative citizenship, mortality, emigration. Pre-1973 admissions were added based on data on noncitizens in the March 2002 Current Population Survey. This method resulted in a total estimated LPR population of 11.5 million in 2002 which is consistent with estimates by other researchers.