Immigration and Military Service
May 25, 2026
About 830K veterans and active-duty service members were born abroad. One in four of this group was born in Mexico or the Philippines.
These charts show which countries foreign-born veterans and active-duty service members hail from, their periods of service, and where they currently live. Children of US military families who were born overseas are not included in these calculations.
What's measured
Foreign-born veterans living in the United States, 2020–2024. "Veteran" includes anyone who served, on active duty or in the reserves, plus persons currently active-duty at the time of the survey.
How "foreign-born" is defined
Born outside the United States to non-American parents. Persons born abroad to American parents are counted as native, parallel to how Puerto Rico–born persons are counted, and consistent with other published estimates on immigrant veterans. This excludes about 23% of the persons the Census Bureau's geographic "foreign-born" definition would capture, who are predominantly children of US military families born overseas (particularly in Germany, Japan, England, Canada, and the Panama Canal Zone).
War-era assignment
A veteran who served across multiple periods is assigned to their most recent period. The "post-Vietnam peacetime" bucket (May 1975 – Jul 1990) is identified residually — IPUMS does not separately surface that era in the 2020–2024 ACS, so vets in that window appear as those with no other period flag set (12% of the universe).
Source
IPUMS USA 2020–2024 ACS 5-year sample. 39,844 unweighted records; 830,453 PERWT-weighted. Country axis uses BPLD (detailed birthplace) for country-level rollups and BPL for regional aggregates. My estimate is approximately consistent with MPI's published 2022 figure (731,000 immigrant veterans), with the small residual difference attributable to 5-year ACS pooling and minor universe choices.
187,000 immigrants have naturalized through military service since 9/11.
USCIS military naturalization since FY2002 tracks American foreign policy. Five eras shape the annual series — a Bush-era ramp-up, the Iraq and Afghanistan deployment, a post-drawdown steady state, the MAVNI suspension and COVID collapse, and a recovery culminating in the all-time peak of
The Army remains the dominant branch across both periods (~60%) but lost a small share as Navy grew from
Foreign-born veterans naturalizing within 0–2 years of arrival used to be rare — about 11% of pre-1990 arrivals — because the standard residency requirement is five years. After the 2002 expedited-military-naturalization pathway opened (INA §329, Bush EO 13269), that share rose to 23% for 2010s arrivals. The leftmost dark-teal segment in each bar reflects the post-9/11 acceleration: arrive young, enlist, and naturalize during service. Read the 2020s bar with caution: the 2020–2024 arrival cohort is observed only 0–4 years into its trajectory, so the chart mechanically only captures those who already naturalized by 2024. Slow-naturalizers from the 2020 cohort haven't naturalized yet and are invisible here — the apparent
What's measured
Annual count of US service members and veterans who naturalized through expedited military naturalization, FY2002–FY2024. Authorized by INA §329; activated by President Bush's July 2002 designation of post-9/11 service. Cumulative:
How "military naturalization" is defined
Naturalizations granted under Sections 328 (peacetime service) or 329 (designated conflict periods) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as published in USCIS annual military naturalization statistics. Counts include ceremonies conducted in the United States and overseas — forward-deployed ceremonies at military bases abroad were a substantial share during the FY2005–FY2011 deployment peak (Iraq alone produced 678 abroad ceremonies in FY2010). Recipients include US permanent residents, refugees, asylees, and certain nonimmigrant visa holders eligible under the relevant INA sections.
Era assignment
The five eras are empirical, derived from inflection points in the annual time series rather than from policy-event timing. FY2002–FY2004 (Ramp-up): Bush Executive Order 13269 enables expedited processing; 13,420 naturalizations over three years. FY2005–FY2011 (Iraq + Afghanistan): wartime deployment drives 61,502 naturalizations, peaking at 11,230 in FY2010. MAVNI (launched FY2008) was a concurrent but secondary contributor to this era. FY2012–FY2017 (Steady state): drawdown produces ~8,000–9,000 per year; 50,530 total. FY2018–FY2020 (MAVNI suspension + COVID): the 2017 MAVNI suspension and 2020 pandemic collapse the program to a 4,537 annual mean; 13,610 total. FY2021–FY2024 (Recovery and surge): Biden-era processing recovery produces the all-time peak of 16,290 in FY2024; 47,950 across four years.
Source
USCIS Military Naturalization Statistics, FY2002–FY2024 annual counts compiled from USCIS Office of Performance and Quality (OPQ) publications and Office of Homeland Security Statistics Annual Flow Reports. Women's-share infographics from the USCIS military naturalization statistics page, FY2020 through FY2024 (FY2023 not published). Country-of-birth breakdown from USCIS Data Table 1 on the current Military Naturalization Statistics page (FY2020–FY2024 partition); the panel sum of 52,500 reconciles to the annual time-series total of 52,520 within 0.04%. Abroad-ceremony breakdown from USCIS Data Table 3 on the FY2017 archive page (FY2005–FY2017 partition; USCIS stopped publishing the in-USA / abroad disaggregation after FY2017). Branch-of-service composition from USCIS Data Table 4 (FY2016–FY2019 and FY2020–FY2024 partitions). Note: USCIS revises historical totals 1–6% in later reports as case-completion lag resolves; the deck uses the most-recently-published number for each year.
The foreign-born share of US veterans has steadily increased in recent years.
In 1930, immigrants were 11.2% of the veteran population. By 1990, the share dropped to 2.6%, and it has recently increased to 4.8%. The composition of the foreign-born veteran population has also seen dramatic changes over the years. Europeans were 87% of foreign-born veterans in 1930; by 2024 Latin Americans, Asians, and Africans together are nearly three-quarters of the foreign-born universe (see panel below).
In 1930 nearly nine in ten foreign-born veterans were European; by 2024 European-born veterans are
What's measured
The share of US veterans who were born outside the United States, observed at nine points between 1930 and 2024. "Veterans" includes anyone who served plus currently active-duty personnel, all ages and both sexes. "Foreign-born" excludes Puerto Rico-born US citizens and US citizens born abroad to American parents, parallel to slide 2's universe definition.
How "FB share" is defined
For each observation year, foreign-born veterans divided by all veterans (any age, plus currently active-duty personnel). Cross-sectional measure, not a cohort follow-up: each year's denominator includes everyone alive at that observation who had ever served. The recoded foreign-born definition has no effect on observations before 1980 — the "born abroad to American parents" category is not separately coded in IPUMS USA samples from 1940-1970, so 1930-1970 datapoints are identical pre- and post-recode.
Year comparability
Using nine observation points across 94 years creates non-uniform gaps. 1930 captures men who served in WWI and earlier; 1940 adds the interwar peace; 1950 captures WWII service at full strength; the 1960-1980 datapoints span the Korea / Vietnam / draft-end transitions; 1990 reflects the post-Cold-War volunteer force; 2000 and 2024 are the modern recruitment environment. Each datapoint is a cross-section, not a cohort follow-up — the foreign-born veterans observed in 1940 are a different population from those observed in 1980. I found two definitional asymmetries to also keep in mind when reading this data: (1) Merchant Marine WWII service was excluded from VETSTAT in the pre-1990 censuses by design and included in 1990+ samples — pre-1990 datapoints under-count WWII veterans by roughly 5-7% relative to the modern definition, narrowing the 1930→1990 decline slightly. (2) The CITIZEN=1 → native recode is a no-op pre-1980 but trims foreign-born veteran counts by about 9% in 1980, 18% in 1990 and 2000, and 23% in 2024 — so part of the 1980-1990 dip and part of the muted 2024 recovery is driven by this.
Source
U.S. decennial censuses 1930 to 2000 plus the 2020-2024 American Community Survey 5-year file, via IPUMS USA. Each sample weighted by its standard person weight; sample-line weights used for the 1940 and 1950 records where the veteran question was only asked on the sample-line questionnaire.
Trends in how first, second, and third generation+ Americans serve.
These charts show trends in how military service rates vary according to generation and origin. The two panels below are intentionally separated because the data sources differ: the historical half comes from the U.S. decennial census (a near-complete enumeration that asked parental birthplace directly on the long form), while the modern half comes from the annual Current Population Survey ASEC (a 75K-household sample). The parental-birthplace question wasn't on any survey between 1971 and 1993, so the visual gap mirrors a real data gap. The decomposition panels below show the full within-2nd-gen variance.
The headline ratio (
"1st gen" is two populations averaged. Childhood arrivals (age 0–12) — the 1.5 generation, primary-schooled in the US — serve at
What's measured
The share of US men aged 30-50 in each nativity generation who had ever served in the US military by the time of the observation. "Served" reflects lifetime any-service — active duty in any branch during any period, including short peacetime stints — rather than single-war participation. This is why the 1940-1970 historical-half rates run high: men aged 30-50 in those years had near-universal cumulative exposure to WWII (1941-1945), the Korean War (1950-1953), and the peacetime draft (1948-1973). Men born 1920-1928 served at rates approaching 80% under this lifetime definition; a single-war framing for the same cohort would report a much lower figure (~33% of military-age men served specifically in WWII). Generations are defined by own and parental birthplace: 1st gen (born outside the US to non-American parents), 2nd gen (US-born with ≥1 foreign-born parent), 3+ gen (US-born with two US-born parents). Observed at the four IPUMS decennials 1940-1970 and annually in CPS ASEC 1994-2024.
How "generation" is defined
Generation requires observing both own birthplace and parental birthplace, which the US Census collected directly through 1970 and the March CPS resumed in 1994. The intervening period (1971-1993) is a data gap — parental birthplace was not on the long-form census after 1970, and the CPS didn't add the question until the 1994 redesign. The 1940-1970 second-gen universe is defined cleanly. The modern second-gen universe includes a small share (~5%) of respondents whose foreign-born-by-birthplace parent was a US citizen at birth — predominantly children of US military families born overseas. This biases the modern 2nd-gen veteran rate slightly upward; if these cases could be reclassified, the inversion would strengthen, not weaken.
Generation assignment
Veteran rates are age-standardized to men 30-50 at each observation year, so that generational comparisons are not confounded with cohort effects. Without standardization, draft-era cohorts in the historical half and older-skewing 1st-gen populations in the modern half would dominate the rate comparisons. Slide 4's chart (foreign-born share of the military 1930-2024) uses no age standardization because it answers a different question (cross-temporal share of the veteran population), not the cross-generational comparison made here.
Source
Historical half: U.S. decennial censuses 1940 to 1970 via IPUMS USA, with sample-line weights for 1940 and 1950 (where the veteran question was asked only on the sample-line questionnaire). Modern half: Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement, 1994 to 2025, via IPUMS CPS. Anchor ratios: 1.086 at 1994, 0.737 at 2024. Slide 6 shows the 1940 second-gen population at country-level detail — the right end of the historical thread here.
More than half a million sons of immigrants fought in World War I.
By 1940,
By 1940,
One natural hypothesis might be that Central Powers descendants (predominantly German, Austrian, and Hungarian immigrants' sons) might have served at lower rates than Allied descendants under suspicion of divided wartime loyalty. The data doesn't show a significant gap of this kind: Allied-origin sons served at
What's measured
US-born WWI veterans living in 1940 who had at least one foreign-born parent. "WWI veteran" reflects the 1940 census sample-line question about prior military service. Approximately 544,000 individuals nationwide, SLWT-weighted.
How "second-gen WWI vet" is defined
US-born self, served in WWI, at least one foreign-born parent per FBPL/MBPL. The only direct microdata observation of second-generation veterans for any pre-1990 American war — the 1940 census uniquely combined parental birthplace and veteran status on its sample-line questionnaire.
Parental origin assignment
Where both parents were foreign-born from the same country, that country is used. Where both parents were foreign-born from different countries (8.0% of universe), the father's country is used. Where one parent was foreign-born and the other US-born, the foreign-born parent's country is used. IPUMS-harmonized parental birthplace projects pre-1918 European political boundaries onto post-1918 successor states; a child of parents born in Austrian Poland (Galicia), for example, is coded as having Polish parental origin. Northern Ireland and French Canadian subdivisions are present in FBPLD but collapsed to Ireland / Canada here for visual consistency with the FBPL-based axis used for the other 13 origins.
Source
1940 U.S. census, 1% sample-line records via IPUMS USA. Sample-line records carry both the WWI veteran question and parental birthplace, analyzed with the published sample-line weight. Slide 5 presents the parallel modern-era measurement using Current Population Survey data, 1994 through present.
Methodology and sources
A summary of how each chart in the deck was built — the universe definitions, data sources, and the choices that shape what the charts can and can't say. For a faster read, the methodology footer on each individual slide carries the chart-specific detail; this page collects the broad strokes in one place.
Current foreign-born veterans by origin and war served
Universe. US veterans and active-duty service members observed in the 2020–2024 American Community Survey 5-year sample (about 830,000 individuals after weighting). "Veteran" includes anyone who served on active duty or in the reserves at any point, plus persons currently active-duty at the time of the survey.
Foreign-born definition. Born outside the United States to non-American parents. Persons born abroad to American parents — predominantly children of US military families serving overseas (Germany, Japan, England, Canada, Panama Canal Zone) — are counted as native. This removes about 23% of the persons captured by the Census Bureau's geographic foreign-born definition and brings the estimate close to other published series on immigrant veterans. Puerto Rico-born persons are also counted as native, consistent with US citizenship at birth.
War-era assignment. A veteran who served across multiple periods is assigned to their most recent period. A residual "post-Vietnam peacetime" bucket (May 1975 to July 1990) captures the ~12% of the universe who lack any explicit period flag in the ACS — this is a known data-coverage gap, not a separate analytical category.
State map. Per-state foreign-born share of veterans (or active-duty service members, via the toggle), 2020–2024 ACS. Small-population states carry wider confidence intervals — read the Northeast active-duty cells with that in mind.
Military naturalizations FY2002–FY2024
Universe. Annual count of service members and veterans who became US citizens through expedited military naturalization, authorized by Section 329 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and activated by President Bush's July 2002 designation of post-9/11 service as qualifying. Cumulative across the period: approximately 187,000 service members.
What's included. Both Section 328 (peacetime service) and Section 329 (designated conflict periods) naturalizations. Ceremonies conducted in the United States and overseas at military bases. Recipients include US permanent residents, refugees, asylees, and certain nonimmigrant visa holders eligible under the relevant INA sections. Excludes posthumous citizenship grants.
Five eras. The era boundaries (Ramp-up, Iraq + Afghanistan deployment, Steady state, MAVNI suspension + COVID, Recovery and surge) are derived empirically from inflection points in the annual count, not from policy-event timing. They line up well with policy events but are data-derived rather than imposed.
Supplementary panels. Branch-of-service composition (Army / Navy / Marines / Air Force / Coast Guard / Unknown) for the FY2016–FY2019 and FY2020–FY2024 partitions. Country-of-birth top-10 for FY2020–FY2024 only — USCIS doesn't publish a country breakdown for FY2002–FY2015. Overseas-ceremony location for FY2005–FY2017 only — USCIS stopped publishing the in-USA / abroad disaggregation after FY2017. Time from arrival to naturalization, by arrival cohort: read the 2020s bar with care, as the observation window mechanically caps how slow that cohort's naturalizations can appear.
Sources. USCIS Military Naturalization Statistics annual reports, Office of Homeland Security Statistics Annual Flow Reports. Women's-share infographics from USCIS for FY2020 through FY2024 (FY2023 not published). USCIS revises historical totals 1–6% in later reports as case-completion lag resolves; this deck uses the most-recently-published figure for each year.
Foreign-born share of US veterans, 1930 → present
Universe. The share of US veterans (all ages, both sexes, plus currently active-duty personnel) who were born outside the United States, observed at nine points: 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, and the 2020–2024 ACS 5-year. Same foreign-born recode as slide 2 (Puerto Rico-born and US citizens born abroad to American parents counted as native).
Comparability across the 94-year span. Each datapoint is a cross-section, not a cohort follow-up — the foreign-born veterans observed in 1940 are a different population from those observed in 1980. Two definitional asymmetries are worth surfacing: (1) Merchant Marine WWII service was excluded from the veteran question in the pre-1990 censuses by design and included in 1990 and later — so pre-1990 datapoints under-count WWII veterans by roughly 5–7% relative to the modern definition, narrowing the 1930→1990 decline slightly. (2) The "born abroad to American parents → native" recode is a no-op for pre-1980 samples (the category isn't separately coded) but trims foreign-born veteran counts by about 9% in 1980, 18% in 1990 and 2000, and 23% in 2024. Part of the 1980-1990 dip and part of the muted 2024 recovery is driven by the recode rather than by an immigration-cycle change.
Composition panel. The stacked-area continent composition uses the same nine observation points, restricted to the foreign-born subset, and normalizes to share. Latin America + Caribbean rolls together; Africa is shown separately even when the share is near zero in early decades; Canada, Pacific, and unmapped origins are grouped as "other".
Sources. U.S. decennial censuses 1930 to 2000 plus the 2020–2024 American Community Survey 5-year file, accessed through IPUMS USA. Each sample weighted by its standard person weight, with sample-line weights used for 1940 and 1950 where the veteran question was on the sample-line questionnaire only.
Veteran rate by nativity generation, 1940 → 2024
Universe. The share of US men aged 30–50 in each nativity generation who had ever served in the US military by the time of the observation. Age-standardized to 30–50 throughout so generational comparisons are not confounded with cohort effects. "Served" reflects lifetime any-service — active duty in any branch during any period, including short peacetime stints — rather than single-war participation. This is why the 1940–1970 historical-half rates run high (men aged 30–50 in those years had near-universal cumulative exposure to WWII, Korea, and the peacetime draft) and the modern-era rates run much lower (the all-volunteer force, no major mobilization for most of the modern observation window).
How "generation" is defined. 1st gen = born outside the US to non-American parents; 2nd gen = US-born with at least one foreign-born parent; 3+ gen = US-born with two US-born parents. Generation classification requires observing both own birthplace and parental birthplace, which the US decennial Census collected directly through 1970 and the Current Population Survey March supplement resumed in 1994. The intervening 1971–1993 period is a real data gap.
Why two panels. The chart is split into two side-by-side panels because the data sources differ: the historical half comes from the decennial census (a near-complete enumeration), while the modern half comes from the annual CPS Annual Social and Economic Supplement (a ~75K-household survey). Combining them on a single continuous axis would imply more continuity than the underlying instruments support.
Supplementary panels. Parental-origin small multiples for the modern 2nd-gen population reveal a 7-percentage-point spread across the top eight 2nd-gen origins — the aggregate "inversion" is largely a composition story rather than a uniform behavioral shift. Age-at-arrival decomposition splits the modern 1st-gen population into childhood arrivals (the 1.5 generation, who serve at near-2nd-gen rates), adolescent arrivals, and adult arrivals (who serve at much lower rates).
Sources. U.S. decennial censuses 1940 to 1970 via IPUMS USA, with sample-line weights for 1940 and 1950. Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement, 1994 to 2025, via IPUMS CPS.
1940 second-generation WWI veterans by parental birthplace
Universe. US-born WWI veterans living in 1940 who had at least one foreign-born parent (approximately 545,000 individuals nationwide). The 1940 census uniquely combined the WWI veteran question with the parental birthplace question on its sample-line questionnaire — the only direct microdata observation of second-generation veterans for any pre-1990 American war.
Parental origin assignment. Where both parents were foreign-born from the same country, that country is used. Where both were foreign-born from different countries (about 8% of the universe), the father's country is used as a tie-break. Where one parent was foreign-born and the other US-born, the foreign-born parent's country is used. IPUMS-harmonized parental birthplace projects pre-1918 European political boundaries onto post-1918 successor states — for example, a child of parents born in Austrian Poland (Galicia) is coded as having Polish parental origin.
Supplementary panels. First-generation (foreign-born) WWI veterans observed in the same 1940 sample, keyed by their own birthplace — the immigrants who served, not their American-born sons. WWI service rate among 2nd-gen men aged 40–50 in 1940 (the WWI-eligible birth cohort 1890–1900) by parental WWI alliance: Allied / Central Powers / Contested-or-partitioned territories / Neutral.
Sources. 1940 U.S. census, 1% sample-line records via IPUMS USA. Sample-line records carry both the WWI veteran question and parental birthplace, analyzed with the published sample-line weight.
A note on tools
This research presentation was developed with assistance from Anthropic's Claude Code (Opus 4.7), which was used for pipeline development, chart construction, and deployment. All analytical decisions, methodological choices, source selections, and interpretations are the author's own. I take full responsibility for any errors.
Built in Observable Framework with the Observable Plot library and the IPUMS USA / IPUMS CPS microdata archives at the Minnesota Population Center. USCIS administrative data accessed via the USCIS Military Naturalization Statistics page and its Wayback Machine snapshots. US state geography from the us-atlas TopoJSON archive.
Questions, corrections, or suggestions: gguerra@niskanencenter.org