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Share of Illegal Immigrants Across 9 Developed Countries

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A bubble chart showing the share of illegal immigrants across 9 developed countries

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Share of Illegal Immigrants Across 9 Developed Countries

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President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to begin mass deportations of illegal immigrants within 24 hours of taking office on January 20. Currently, over 11 million people live in the United States without legal status.

To put this into perspective, this graphic shows the share of immigrants without legal status in nine selected developed countries. The data is sourced from Kierans & Vargas-Silva (2024) and UN DESA (2020) and was compiled by Our World in Data.

Comparing the Share of Undocumented Immigrants

The U.S. not only has the largest number of illegal immigrants in absolute terms compared to the other countries on this list, but it also leads proportionally. Currently, it’s estimated that 22% of immigrants in America lack legal status.

CountryTotal Immigrants (2020)Illegal ImmigrantsPercentage of Total Immigrants
🇺🇸 United States50.6M11M22%
🇮🇹 Italy6.4M458K7%
🇬🇧 United Kingdom9.4M674K7%
🇪🇸 Spain6.8M430K6%
🇩🇪 Germany15.8M650K4%
🇨🇦 Canada8M260K3%
🇫🇷 France8.5M250K3%
🇳🇱 Netherlands2.4M40K2%
🇵🇱 Poland817K19K2%

Germany and the U.K. follow in absolute terms, with undocumented populations of 4% and 7%, respectively.

Countries like the Netherlands, Poland, and Canada maintain low proportions of undocumented immigrants (2–3%).

The Cost of Deporting Illegal Immigrants

In a recent graphic, we highlighted that a one-time operation to deport 11 million illegal immigrants from the U.S. would cost approximately $315 billion.

According to the American Immigration Council, mass deportations could have significant economic impacts, potentially reducing annual GDP by 4.2% to 6.8%. This translates to a loss of $1.1 trillion to $1.7 trillion per year.

Learn More on the Voronoi App 

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic that shows the countries most exposed to potential immigration policy changes under the Trump presidency.

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