7 facts about Venezuelans in the U.S.

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7 facts about Venezuelans in the U.S.

By Jeffrey S. Passel and Dalia Fahmy, PEW Research

Jan 9th, 2025

On Jan. 3, the United States conducted a military strike on Venezuela and brought President Nicolás Maduro to New York to face charges related to drug trafficking.

In recent decades, Venezuela has experienced economic and political crises that have led to record numbers of Venezuelans migrating. They’ve mainly gone to neighboring Latin American countries but also to the U.S. and elsewhere.

Here are seven facts about Venezuelans living in the U.S. Most of the data comes from a Pew Research Center analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey.

In this analysis, Venezuelans are people who self-identify as Hispanics of Venezuelan origin. This includes immigrants from Venezuela and U.S.-born people who trace their family ancestry to Venezuela.

The Venezuelan population in the U.S. more than doubled over the past five years. An estimated 1.2 million Hispanics of Venezuelan origin lived in the U.S. in 2024. That’s an increase of 639,000, or 119%, since 2019.

That makes Venezuelans the fastest-growing Hispanic group in percentage terms, far ahead of Ecuadorians (+47%), Colombians (+43%) and Nicaraguans (+41%).

Overall, the U.S. Hispanic population increased by 12% from 2019 to 2024.

Venezuelans are the ninth-largest U.S. Hispanic group. Despite their rapid growth, Venezuelans are still a relatively small group, accounting for 1.7% of all U.S. Hispanics in 2024. That puts them between Hondurans and Ecuadorians but far behind Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, which are the largest groups.

Eight-in-ten Venezuelans in the U.S. were born elsewhere. That’s a higher share than any other Hispanic origin group. In almost all South and Central American origin groups, 50%-65% of people were born outside the U.S. Among Mexicans, the country’s largest Hispanic population, 29% are immigrants.

Unlike other Latino groups and immigrants in general, most Venezuelan immigrants have been in the U.S. for a relatively short period. Half of Venezuelan immigrants have been in the U.S for less than five years. The only other Latino group where half of immigrants have been in the U.S. for less than 10 years is Hondurans. Most Latino immigrants have been in the U.S. for more than 20 years.

Since President Donald Trump took office in 2025, many Venezuelan immigrants in the U.S. have seen their immigration status change. More than half are in the U.S. without authorization, according to recent Center estimates.

Venezuelan immigrants who are unauthorized include a majority who previously had a legal status that protected them from being deported. Most had Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and a smaller share had “CHNV” protections under a program that allowed immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to live and work in the U.S. In 2025, the Trump administration terminated TPS protections for Venezuelans and canceled the CHNV program.

Venezuelans in the U.S. most commonly live in Florida. In 2024, 474,000 Venezuelans – more than 40% of the national total – lived there. Texas had the second-largest Venezuelan population at almost 200,000, followed by Georgia (57,000), New York (40,000) and Illinois (40,000).

The vast majority of U.S. Venezuelans (95%) live in metropolitan areas. Roughly 254,000 live in the broader Miami metropolitan area, and another 127,000 are in the wider Orlando metro area. In these places, they are 8% and 12% of the metropolitan populations, respectively. Many Hispanics of Venezuelan origin also live in the wider Houston (83,000), New York City (62,000), Dallas (57,000) and Atlanta (49,000) areas.

On some measures, U.S. Venezuelans are more highly educated than Americans overall. Roughly half of Hispanics of Venezuelan origin have a bachelor’s degree or more education (49%). That’s a larger share than among the U.S. population overall (37%) and much larger than among non-Venezuelan Hispanics (21%).

Venezuelans are about as likely as the U.S. population overall to have a graduate degree (16% vs. 15%). And they are much more likely than other Hispanics to have one (16% vs. 7%).

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