Cuba runs one US consulate for 1.4 million Cuban-born residents — which consular networks are stretched thinnest

Name: Consulate coverage by country — foreign-born nationals per US consulate (2026)
Creator: MigrantUSA
License: https://migrantusa.com/terms/

Foreign-born nationals per US consulate, for 12 Latin American countries, joining MigrantUSA's consulate directory to the Census foreign-born population by country of birth. Cuba has one consular office for 1,434,529 Cuban-born residents; Mexico's 54 consulates each serve about 202,379; Argentina and Peru run one per roughly 30,000 — a 49.6x spread. A plain measure of how thinly each consular network is stretched across its people in the US.

How thinly each consular network is stretched across its people

The finding: a consulate is where a country’s nationals in the US renew a passport, get a national ID, register a birth, or obtain an emergency document. Each government decides how many consulates to run here. Divide the number born in each country by the number of that country’s consulates and the coverage turns out to vary enormously.

Cuba is the outlier. It runs a single consular office — the consular section of its embassy in Washington — for 1,434,529 Cuban-born residents. No other country comes close. Mexico, which operates the largest foreign consular network in the United States at 54 consulates, still carries about 202,379 foreign-born nationals per office, because its foreign-born population is nearly 11 million. Venezuela, with the four offices it reopened in 2025-2026, sits at 176,532.

Country	US consulates	Foreign-born nationals	Per consulate
Cuba	1	1,434,529	1,434,529
Mexico	54	10,928,446	202,379
Venezuela	4	706,127	176,532
Dominican Republic	11	1,265,269	115,024
Colombia	17	995,473	58,557

Across all 12 countries the average is one consulate for every 101,088 foreign-born nationals. The best-covered network, Argentina, runs one consulate for every 28,947 — a 49.6× spread from the thinnest coverage to the thickest.

Every country, thinnest coverage first

Foreign-born residents for each of their country's US consulates. Consulate counts are from MigrantUSA's directory; population is the number born in that country (ACS 2024, B05006). Marked rows are above the average of 101,088 per consulate. A consulate serves an assigned jurisdiction — this is a national average, not any one office's caseload.

Country	US consulates	Foreign-born nationals	Per consulate
Cuba	1	1,434,529	1,434,529
Mexico	54	10,928,446	202,379
Venezuela	4	706,127	176,532
Dominican Republic	11	1,265,269	115,024
Colombia	17	995,473	58,557
Ecuador	10	536,972	53,697
El Salvador	29	1,474,092	50,831
Honduras	19	869,367	45,756
Nicaragua	7	315,058	45,008
Guatemala	27	1,193,191	44,192
Peru	16	498,647	31,165
Argentina	7	202,627	28,947

Sources: MigrantUSA consulate directory and the Census Bureau ACS (B05006). "Foreign-born" includes naturalized citizens; it is the closest proxy for the community a consulate serves. Cuba runs a single consular section at its Washington embassy; Venezuela's four offices reflect the 2025-2026 reopening.

What the data shows

Cuba is in a category of its own. One consular office for more than 1.4 million people is roughly seven times the next-thinnest ratio. For most consular business, Cuban-born residents anywhere in the country deal with a single office in Washington.
A big network is not the same as good coverage. Mexico runs the largest foreign consular network in the US — 54 consulates — and still has one of the thinnest ratios, because it also has by far the largest foreign-born population, nearly 11 million.
Small networks can cover their people well. Argentina and Peru each run enough consulates that one office serves 28,947 and 31,165 foreign-born nationals respectively — the thickest coverage in the group.
Venezuela’s coverage is new. Its four consulates reflect the 2025-2026 reopening after US-Venezuela relations were restored; before that, Venezuelan-born residents had no operating consulate to go to.

Why this matters

Consular access is not abstract. A lapsed passport can stall a driver’s-license renewal, a bank account, or a flight home for a funeral; a consular ID is accepted for everyday identification in many places; a birth abroad has to be registered for a child to hold the parents’ nationality. Where a network is stretched thin, appointments are scarcer and travel is longer for the people who depend on it. This dataset is a starting measure of that stretch, by country.

A country’s own consulate is the authoritative source for its services and jurisdictions. MigrantUSA’s consulate directory links each country’s offices, the states they cover, and the procedures they handle.

Method and caveats

Consulate counts are the consular offices in MigrantUSA’s directory — consulates general, consulates and consular agencies, plus an embassy’s consular section where that is a country’s only US consular office (Cuba). Honorary consulates are excluded. The population is the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2024 5-year estimate of the foreign-born by country of birth (table B05006). The ratio is foreign-born nationals divided by consulates.

Three limits are stated plainly. The denominator is foreign-born, not the whole heritage community — the foreign-born are the people who actually use a foreign consulate, though the figure still includes naturalized US citizens, some of whom no longer do. A consulate serves an assigned jurisdiction, so “per consulate” is a national average, not any one office’s caseload; a country’s people are not split evenly among its offices. And the network changes — Venezuela’s reflects a recent reopening, and offices can open or close; confirm current locations with each country’s consulate.

Download the data: consulate_load.json — all 12 countries, consulate count, foreign-born population, and residents per consulate.

Suggested citation: MigrantUSA, “Consulate coverage by country, 2026,” https://migrantusa.com/datasets/consulate-coverage-by-country/ (accessed [date]).

Newsrooms, community organizations and immigrant-services navigators: drop in the panel below. It shows the most-stretched consular networks and the group average, and updates when we refresh the counts.

<iframe src="https://migrantusa.com/embed/consulate-coverage/" width="100%" height="520"
        style="border:1px solid #e2e8e4;border-radius:8px;max-width:640px"
        title="Consulate coverage by country" loading="lazy"></iframe>
<p style="font-size:12px">Source: <a href="https://migrantusa.com/datasets/consulate-coverage-by-country/">MigrantUSA — consulate coverage by country</a></p>

Frequently asked questions

What does this dataset measure?

For 12 Latin American countries with a consular network in the United States, it counts that country’s US consulates and divides the foreign-born population born in that country by the number of consulates. The result is how many foreign-born nationals there are for each of their country’s consulates — a plain measure of how thinly a consular network is stretched. Consulate counts are from MigrantUSA’s consulate directory; the population is the Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey 5-year estimate of people born in each country (table B05006).

Which consular networks are stretched thinnest?

Cuba, by a wide margin: it runs a single consular office — the consular section of its embassy in Washington — for 1,434,529 Cuban-born residents. Mexico is second at about 202,379 foreign-born nationals per consulate, though it also runs the largest foreign consular network in the country, 54 consulates. Venezuela is third at 176,532, across the four offices it reopened in 2025-2026. At the other end, Argentina runs one consulate for every 28,947 of its foreign-born nationals and Peru one for every 31,165 — the thickest coverage in the group.

Why use foreign-born nationals rather than everyone of that heritage?

Because a consulate serves a country’s nationals — people who need that country’s passport, national ID, or civil-registry services — and that maps most closely to the foreign-born, the people actually born in that country. The broader origin community (Census ancestry, which also counts US-born children and grandchildren) is much larger, but US-born citizens do not use a foreign consulate, so counting them would overstate the caseload. Foreign-born is the closest available proxy; it still includes naturalized US citizens, some of whom no longer need consular services.

Why does Cuba have only one consulate?

Cuba does not operate a network of consulates in the United States. Its only consular presence is the consular section of the Cuban Embassy in Washington, DC. That single office is counted here as Cuba’s one consular office, which is why its ratio — more than 1.4 million Cuban-born residents — is so far above every other country’s.

What counts as a consulate here?

The consulates general, consulates and consular agencies in MigrantUSA’s directory, plus an embassy’s consular section where that is a country’s only US consular office (Cuba). Honorary consulates — staffed by volunteers with limited services — are not counted. Because a consulate serves an assigned jurisdiction, the per-consulate figure is a national average, not any one office’s real caseload; a country’s people are not divided evenly among its consulates.

Can I reuse this data?

Yes. The JSON file is free to download and reuse, including commercially, with attribution to MigrantUSA and a link to this page. The Census population figures are U.S. government public-domain data; the consulate directory, the join, and the per-consulate computation are ours.

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