Report: Unauthorized immigration flow drying up
Web Posted: 02/23/2009 7:10 CST

READcomments (2)

By Hernán Rozemberg - Express-News

U.S. government statisticians on Monday confirmed what leading demographers already knew — the national unauthorized immigrant population shrunk for the first time this decade after years of non-stop growth.

According to a report released Monday by the Department of Homeland Security, there are an estimated 11.6 million immigrants living in the country illegally as of last month — slightly down from 11.8 million a year earlier.

The department acknowledged in the report that its findings were consistent with those of Jeffrey Passel, the country’s leading immigration demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. Passel last year put the unauthorized immigrant population at 11.9 million, down from an all-time high of 12.4 million in 2007.

While the report didn’t provide an explanation for the decrease in unauthorized immigrants, immigration experts have associated the decline with the current economic downturn, arguing that a dearth of jobs is forcing some migrants to go home and keeping others from coming here.

Still, the reversal wasn’t lost on the government authors, who noted the decrease put a stop to what had been an unprecedented increase in unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. Over the last decade, their numbers grew by 3.1 million, or 37 percent.

“The 2008 estimate marks the first time since 2005 when DHS began producing annual estimates that there was not a year-to-year increase in unauthorized residents,â€