Europeans living in the United States

If someone had asked me how many European Community citizens live in the United States, I would have said, “I have no idea”. I had a vague guess for the number of French people, maybe 2 to 300,000 but that would have been it. 

Estimating the number of European Union (EU) citizens living in the United States is not an easy task because the US Census doesn’t track immigration status by EU citizenship. However, I found that there might be up to 5 million EC and British citizens living in that country for the years 2023–2024 out of a total population of 340 million, namely less than 1.5% (see table). 

The UK, Germany, Italy, France, Poland, and Ireland have the largest expatriate populations. That number is a mix from the US Census and immigration data, the Embassy registrations and the Pew Research estimate. These people include both legal permanent residents (green card holders) and temporary visa holders (work, student, etc.). 

Dual citizens like me and members of my family, or any one who came and is staying in the United States for good, may inflate these numbers if their ancestry was reported, and this might amount to a significant number of people which I couldn’t begin to guess.