CHANGING THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE

MARCELA SANCHEZ THE WASHINGTON POST

August 9, 2008

A new effort to clear this country of illegal immigrants comes courtesy of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which this week began asking more than 450,000 people who are in violation of deportation orders to come forward, get their personal affairs in order and volunteer to return to their home countries.

Coincidentally, a new report by a think tank that advocates for restricting immigration into the United States shows that hundreds of thousands of people here illegally already have been self-deporting because of increased immigration enforcement efforts. From August of last year until May, according to calculations by the Center for Immigration Studies, the illegal immigrant population declined by about 11 percent, from 12.5 million to 11.2 million. At that pace, the CIS argues, the current number could be cut in half in five years.

But don't hold your breath – immigration and demographic experts are not buying into such a scenario. They agree that there has been some increase in the number of undocumented people leaving the country, but they don't believe you can say with any certainty what those numbers are.

CIS' figures are based on an extrapolation of U.S. Census data that does not specify legal status. Critics contend this is not enough for a sound scientific measure. Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California San Diego, described the CIS metric as so “grossly impreciseâ€