Immigrants from Asia are set to replace Latinos as the largest immigrant group in the United States over the next 40 years, and the nation's overall population will feel the impact of that shift, a large-scale survey of U.S. immigration trends predicts.

Hispanics currently account for 47 percent of foreign-born residents living in the United States, the country that has the world's largest immigrant population by far. But by 2055, the largest group of new arrivals -- 38 percent -- will be Asians, though Latinos will remain a larger share of the nation's overall population, the Pew Research analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data projects.

Part of the reason for the shift is a decrease in the fertility rate of women in Latin America and especially Mexico, Mark Hugo López, Pew's director of Hispanic research, told the Guardian.

"There are relatively fewer people who would choose to migrate from Mexico, so demographic changes in Mexico have led to a somewhat smaller pool of potential migrants," López said. "At the same time we've seen a growing number of immigrants, particularly from China or India, who are coming for reasons such as pursuing a college degree or coming here to work temporarily in the high-tech sector."

The organization's findings come as part of its investigation on the impacts of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. The legislation changed U.S. immigration policy by doing away with a national origins quota system that favored European immigrants, replacing it with one that emphasized skilled immigrants and particularly family reunification.

The demographic impact of the legislation turned out be dramatic, given that the 59 million or so immigrants who arrived in the United States between 1965 and 2015 "exceed those who arrived in the great waves of European-dominated immigration during the 19th and early 20th centuries," noted the survey, titled "Modern Immigration Wave Brings 59 Million to U.S., Driving Population Growth and Change Through 2065."

Within 50 years, no racial or ethnic group will constitute a majority of the overall population, though Hispanics will see their population share rise to 24 percent. Non-Hispanic whites, meanwhile, will become the largest minority group, at 46 percent, the survey predicted.

"Hispanic population growth is coming from people born here in the United States," not new immigrants, López explained. "It is really U.S. births that are now the driver of Hispanic population growth, and that's a recent change from what we saw in the 80s and 90s."