New York: About 11.7 million immigrants are living in the United States illegally, a population that has not varied much over the last three years but showed signs recently of increasing again, according to new estimates published on Monday by the Pew Research Centre Hispanic Trends Project.
As lawmakers in Washington debate an immigration overhaul that could include a pathway to legal status or citizenship for millions of unauthorised immigrants, the figures from the non-partisan Pew Centre are regarded by many demographers as the most reliable estimates of the number of immigrants who might be eligible for those programmes.
The new estimates, which are based on the most recent census data and other official statistics, show that the population of immigrants in the US illegally did not decline significantly from 2009 to 2012, despite record numbers of deportations by the Obama administration — about 400,000 deportations each year — and laws to crack down on illegal immigration in states like Alabama, Arizona and Georgia.
Recent figures, including reports from the US Border Patrol of illegal crossings at the southwest border, suggest that the numbers began to grow again last year. But Pew researchers said the increases in the 2012 census data — the latest available — were too small for them to conclusively confirm the recent rise.
Overall, the hopes of some lawmakers that tough enforcement could substantially reduce the numbers of illegal immigrants in the country are not borne out by the new estimates.
“For Congress working on the demands of a potential legalisation program, these are pretty solid numbers,” said Jeffrey S. Passel, senior demographer at Pew’s Hispanic Trends Project, who wrote the report with D’Vera Cohn and Ana Gonzalez-Barrera.
The Pew researchers, for the first time using larger census samples from past years, also went back to revise some of their previous estimates. The new figures, while only slightly different, show an even clearer picture of the surging growth in unauthorised immigrants to a peak of 12.2 million in 2007 from 3.5 million in 1990.
In 2008 and 2009, there was a steep drop, with the numbers falling to an estimated 11.3 million. After 2009, the population levelled off and by some measures might have been gradually growing.
The Pew report does not point to any causes of the population changes. But Passel noted that the dates of the decrease matched the onset of the deepest years of the recession.
“We don’t know what caused that decline, but it certainly coincides with the recession,” Passel said. “And we can say that the current enforcement practices have not led to any measurable reduction beyond the 2009 period.”
The Pew report also confirms a striking reversal in the patterns of migration from Mexico. Since 2007, Pew demographers found “dramatic reductions in arrivals of new unauthorised immigrants from Mexico.” They cite Mexican census figures showing that the rate of migration to the US dropped by two-thirds from 2007 to 2012.
From 2007 to 2009, the report says, more undocumented Mexicans left the US than came here illegally, “a marked change in pattern from the largest immigration wave in US history.”
About six million immigrants born in Mexico still make up 52 per cent of the unauthorised population, according to the Pew estimates. But recent increases in illegal arrivals are migrants from countries other than Mexico, including Central American nations.
Roughly speaking, Passel said, the number of migrants coming in illegally and those leaving the US or gaining legal status are now in balance.
The report shows variations among states. In Texas, the unauthorised population never saw any significant decline. In Florida and New Jersey, the numbers are growing again after falling in the first years of the recession. In California, Illinois and New York, the numbers declined after 2007 and never rebounded.
Unauthorised immigrants are notoriously difficult to count because there are no official rosters and because they can be more reluctant than legal immigrants to respond to census requests. The Pew researchers derive their estimates using a complex formula that calculates the number of legal immigrants in the country and subtracts that from the overall foreign-born population, which was 41.7 million last year. Immigrants here illegally made up about 28 per cent of that total, according to the Pew report.
