Immigrant adults are a diverse population who make up 16% of adults in the United States and play a significant role in the nation’s workforce and communities. Leading up to the 2024 election, there has been an increase in anti-immigrant rhetoric and discussion of immigrants' health care use and costs. Immigration has been a central talking point for candidates. The Trump campaign has repeatedly described immigrants as a source of crime, a burden for taxpayers, and a drain on government programs like Medicare and Social Security. The Harris campaign has also focused on immigration, emphasizing her tough on crime stance as a former attorney general of a border state, while also highlighting her family’s immigrant roots. Some states have also taken restrictive actions focused on immigrants, including requiring hospitals to collect patient immigration status.

Amid this rhetoric and these recent state actions, data on immigrants’ health care use and costs as well as their contributions to the economy and workforce, including in the health care sector, can be informative. This brief provides key data on these topics drawing on KFF analysis across a range of data sources, including the KFF/LA Times Survey of Immigrants, the largest nationally representative survey of immigrants conducted to date, and other research.

Immigrants are not more likely than U.S.-born citizens to report using government assistance for food, housing, or health care, and undocumented immigrants remain ineligible for federally funded assistance.

The 2023 KFF/LA Times Survey of Immigrants shows that, despite having lower household incomes and facing financial challenges, immigrant adults are no more likely than U.S.-born adults to say that they or someone living with them received government assistance with food, housing, or health care in the past year. Overall, about a quarter (28%) of both immigrant adults and U.S.-born citizen adults say they received this type of assistance in the past 12 months (Figure 1).

Lawfully present immigrants face eligibility restrictions for federal programs, including Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). In general, lawfully present immigrants must have a “qualified status” to be eligible for Medicaid or CHIP, and many, including most lawful permanent residents or “green card” holders, must wait five years after obtaining qualified status before they may enroll even if they meet other eligibility requirements. Some lawfully present immigrants, such as refugees and asylees, are exempt from the five-year waiting period.

Read the full article about health care use among immigrants by Alisha Rao, Drishti Pillai, and Samantha Artiga at KFF.