How Many Americans Live in Mexico
Mexico hosts the largest US-born population in the world outside the United States, but its census counts birthplace, not passports. Many of the people it counts are the American-born children of Mexican families who moved home.
The American Emigration Revue counts US citizensPeople holding United States citizenship, as counted by Mexico's own official records. A separate population from US-born residents; the two are never added. Definitions ›, US-born residentsPeople born in the United States living in Mexico, whatever citizenship they hold today. A separate population from US citizens; the two are never added. Definitions ›, naturalizations and long-term permits from official government sources, with every figure cited. This page sets out what Mexico publishes, what it does not, and how far the published record can be trusted.
Why Mexico's Records, Not Washington's
The ContextThe context every page needs: who counts Americans abroad, and who doesn't.
The United States publishes no count of its own citizens abroad. Its best federal figure, 3.3 million Americans worldwide, is a statistical model built to size the overseas electorate, and the same model said 4.4 million two years earlier. The Census Bureau decided in 1976 to exclude private Americans abroad from the decennial enumeration (overseas federal employees and military are still counted). What Washington publishes instead is fragments: Social Security checks mailed to foreign addresses, tax returns claiming foreign income, quarterly lists of people who gave up their citizenship. See what each federal source actually counts ›
So this project counts from the receiving side. Every figure on this page comes from records Mexico itself publishes, read under the same rules applied to every country in the project. Where Mexico publishes, it is counted and cited. Where it does not, the gap is shown rather than filled: no estimates, no models. How openly each country reports ›
How Mexico Counts Americans
The One CountOne "US presence," one official count. The other measures on this page answer different questions.
What the Research Found
The FindingsFindings from the Mexico research, drawn from the official record.
The Figures as Data
The EvidenceMachine-readable copy of the figures on this page, each with the year its source published it. Free to download and reuse with attribution.
| Figure | Value | Vintage | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|
| US-born residents | 797,266 | — | INEGI |
| US-citizen arrivals (2024) | 15,781 | 2024 | — |
| US-citizen arrivals | 21,551 | — | — |
| Naturalizations of US citizens (2024) | 182 | 2024 | — |
| Naturalizations of US citizens | 150 | — | — |
| US visitor arrivals | 14,147,998 | 2024 | — |
Vintage is the year the publishing authority reported the figure. A dash means the year or publisher is not yet recorded in our dataset for that figure; the Sources and Datasets section below names every publisher behind this page. The free CSV covers the years shown to readers without an account.
Pathways, Status & Geography
How Americans get here, what permits they hold, and where they settle within the country.
Mexico's annual US-citizen TRT+TRP newly-issued residence-permit issuance breaks into migration categories under the post-Lei de Migración (2011) framework, separate breakdowns for TRT (Temporary Resident) and TRP (Permanent Resident). Renewals are excluded, per AER methodology. Category frameworks are country-specific and not comparable across countries.
How Far to Trust These Figures
The Publishing RecordWhat Mexico publishes, how often it publishes, and the sources behind every number on this page.
The gaps: Published as a regular series: annual arrivals, naturalizations. Published only partially or as one-off estimates: US-born residents. Not published: resident US citizens, residence or work permits: those gaps set the grade; they do not make the published figures wrong. What the partial figures can support: US-Born comes as a one-off figure rather than a yearly series: good for a snapshot of today, not for reading a trend.
No US-citizen figure is shown, because Mexico has no direct US-citizen stock instrument: TRT and TRP are flows, and the 23,502 figure was an event count rather than a stock. No work-permits figure is shown either. AER's finding is that Mexico does not publish a standalone nationality-specific work-permit dataset; employment-related permits sit inside the TRT and TRP labour categories, where the 2,069 TRT-work and 460 TRP-work entries for 2025 are sub-lines within inflows rather than a separate work-permit count.
Every figure on this page comes from one of the publishers below. Links go to the authority and, where stable, straight to the dataset.
Frequently Asked Questions
Quick AnswersEvery answer is drawn from the official record, from the same sources cited across this page.
How many Americans move to Mexico each year?
How many Americans become citizens of Mexico?
Does Mexico recognize dual citizenship with the United States?
Where do the figures for Americans in Mexico come from?
News stories our newsroom has published about this country.
The full series, every year, every country
The public view shows a limited year window for each series. Researchers and journalists can request access to the complete annual record for every country in the project.