Delaware Explained: Immigrants

Federal immigration enforcement under the Trump administration has upended the lives of hundreds of immigrants living in southern Delaware. Residents who have lived in the state for decades are now retreating back into the shadows as agents have cracked down, particularly on a handful of rural towns near the Delaware-Maryland border. 

The poultry industry in Sussex County is a significant draw for many newcomers to settle in small towns in southern Delaware.

The figures in this story come from the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit immigration research group, and the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. 

Who are immigrants? 

An immigrant is defined as a person who moves to a foreign country with the intention of settling there permanently. Generally, it refers to anyone born outside the U.S. to non-citizen parents. 

Immigrants can be further categorized into a myriad of statuses. These categories often refer to a person’s reason for coming to the U.S. or if their immigration process was legal.

• Refugee: Refugee is an official status that is given to someone who has been forced to flee their country because of war, violence and/or persecution.

• Asylum seeker: An asylum seeker is a person who is seeking international protection from violence, persecution or other dangers in their home country — but hasn’t been legally determined a refugee.

• Permanent resident: Lawful permanent residents, also known as “green card holders,” are immigrants who have received the legal right to permanently reside in the U.S. 

• Undocumented immigrant: Undocumented immigrants are foreign-born people residing in a country without legal permission or authorization. 

Delaware immigration by the numbers

There are 118,900 immigrants in Delaware, accounting for 11.5% of the state’s population, according to 2023 data from the American Immigration Council. 

An estimated quarter of Delaware’s immigrant population – 30,500 people – is undocumented. In total, undocumented immigrants make up about 3% of the state’s total population. 

In Delaware, there are 27,000 U.S. citizens who are living with at least one undocumented family member, accounting for nearly 3% of the entire state population.

Do immigrants pay taxes?

Yes. All four categories of immigrants pay property taxes and pay income taxes if they are reporting their income to the IRS.

While undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Social Security benefits, they do pay into the system.

Undocumented immigrants in the First State paid roughly $160.7 million in taxes in 2023, according to the American Immigration Council.

Can companies hire undocumented immigrants?

No.The U.S. Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) prohibits knowingly hiring, recruiting, or referring for a fee anyone unauthorized to work in the U.S. 

Employers are required to verify the work authorization of all employees through the Form I-9 process. Violating the IRCA can lead to both civil and criminal penalties.

Then how do immigrants contribute to Delaware’s workforce?

There are nearly 80,000 immigrants in the workforce, comprising just over 15% of laborers across the state. More than 28% of immigrants work in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields in Delaware.

While companies are not able to hire undocumented immigrants, they are free to create their own businesses as long as they pay the requisite taxes. There are 6,900 immigrant entrepreneurs in the state who bring in over $126 million in business income. 

Similarly, organizations aimed at supporting immigrant and Hispanic businesses have flourished in the past five years, including the launch of the Delaware Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Delaware Alliance of Latino Entrepreneurs.

La Plaza Delaware, an organization which bolsters Latino businesses in Sussex County, began expansion efforts into Kent County last year. The organization has supported over 300 Latino-owned businesses in Sussex with training, events and workshops since it began in 2021.

Additionally, over 15% of recent homebuyers in Delaware were foreign-born. And immigrant households who don’t own paid more than $224 million in rent in 2023. 

Immigrants have $4.2 billion in spending power, which is the amount of goods and services that a person can buy with their available funds, and contributed more than $690 million toward Medicare and Social Security in 2023. 

How many DACA recipients are in Delaware? 

DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is an administrative program created by former President Barack Obama to provide work authorization and temporary relief from deportation to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children. The program, which applicants must renew every two years, was intended to help young adults attend school and work lawfully in the U.S.  

To be eligible, applicants must have arrived before they were 16 years old, have not been convicted of a felony and be in school or serving in the military.

The program has been ensnared in back-and-forth litigation since the Trump administration attempted to rescind it in 2017.

The legal battles have largely barred any new applicants, known as “Dreamers,” from accessing the program that was created to provide work authorization and temporary relief from deportation to immigrants who were brought to the country as children.

As of 2023, there were 1,140 active DACA recipients in the state. But, there are also hundreds of Delawareans who were brought to the country as children who have been largely excluded from the protections of DACA. 

Many of these would-be Dreamers are students or professionals who meet the program requirements but have been shut out due to federal litigation or inadequate applications.

These young unprotected immigrants meet the arrival date and eligibility criteria for DACA but haven’t been able to receive protections because the program largely hasn’t approved any applications since 2017.