The American Community Survey (ACS) is a nationwide survey designed to provide communities with reliable and timely demographic, social, economic, and housing data every year. The main purpose of the ACS is to help Congress decide funding and policies for a broad range of federal programs. Consequently, the ACS covers many diverse topics. ACS items relevant to international migration research include country of birth, U.S. citizenship status, year of naturalization, year of entry into the United States, residence one year ago, race, ethnicity, ancestry, and language spoken at home. For more information about the American Community Survey, please visit the ACS page.

To access ACS data, go to data.census.gov. data.census.gov displays information about the U.S., Puerto Rico, and U.S. Island Areas. Available are data from the ACS, Decennial Census, and many other sources. Tables presented can be downloaded in CSV, PDF, RTF, and XLS file formats.

For guidance on how to access ACS data, go to the Guidance for Data Users page. The Guidance for Data Users page contains links to instructions on how to use AFF and lists of all ACS tables pertaining to citizenship, place of birth, nativity, and year of entry into the United States.

Data users interested in conducting a custom analysis of ACS data can use ACS Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) files. These microdata files contain population and housing unit responses collected on individual ACS questionnaires, but for a subsample of ACS housing units and group quarters persons.

For more information about PUMS, click here. To access a webinar on how to work with ACS PUMS files, click here.