There are many meanings of the word immigrant such as theoretical, administrative or statistical. In the strictly theoretical way, an immigrant is the person who is born in a specific country but his parents has foreign origins or the person who crosses the border of a particular country with the intention of remaining there. In other words, a person is an immigrant when he or she becomes a part of one country population by other methods than by birth. The statistical and administrative meanings of the word immigrant very much vary and depend on the immigration laws and administrative decisions of a country. For instance, in the United States of America the two meanings of the immigrant is resulting by definitions and meanings set forth by the Bureau of Immigration.

In the statistical meaning, immigrant is the word used for a person who is legally responsible for paying head taxes. The official immigration statistics are the subject matter to certain qualifications and try to reflect the total number of the immigrants. There are different agencies that provide statistical information about immigration. Even more, there are many professional organizations that make good analysis of the statistical methods used by the above named agencies. These organizations also provide their own programs, data or products for obtaining immigration statistics as exactly as possible.

The immigration statistics are formulated in figures that indicate the total increase of the national population due to the immigration. These figures are quite exactly for the population increase projected in the last eight years. The immigration statistics are chancing every year as the number of immigrants is higher. The figures included in the statistics also increase by an estimated amount if people arrive by land. At the beginning of 2007, the immigration statistics derived from the Bureau of Immigration indicate an estimated number of 3,750,000 immigrants instead of 4,820,000 since 1898-1905.