Groups at odds over number of illegal immigrants in U.S.
Statistics, politics play part in numbers game
By Eunice Moscoso
WASHINGTON BUREAU
Sunday, October 14, 2007

WASHINGTON — How many illegal immigrants are there in the United States?

The answer depends on who you ask and when you ask it.

The Department of Homeland Security estimates about 11.6 million, and the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, estimates about 12 million. The Urban Institute, a think tank that focuses on minority issues, says it's about 10 million.

The investment firm Bear Stearns stunned many a few years ago with an analysis that put the figure as high as 20 million, based in part on remittances sent to home countries.

Groups seeking stronger immigration enforcement say most calculations are low.

The activist group Californians for Population Stabilization, which says that high levels of immigration are ruining the quality of life in that state, released a report this month with studies that estimated there are from 20 million to 38 million illegal immigrants nationwide.

Immigration advocates and Hispanic groups say those estimates are scare tactics designed to stoke opposition to illegal immigration.

Cecilia Munoz, vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic civil rights organization, said inflated calculations start to appear when the immigration issue stirs up in Congress.

"Now that we're back in the land of the hysterical debates, people are throwing around crazy numbers," she said.

Munoz says her group takes the total number of foreign-born people in the United States, counted by the census, and subtracts the total number of legal immigrants and naturalized citizens, she said. The census does not ask people their legal status.

Jeffrey Passel, a senior research associate at the Pew center, says his estimate includes an adjustment for those not counted by the census.

Passel said some of the higher calculations are based on unscientific methods, such as assuming that a certain number of illegal immigrants get by the Border Patrol for every one that gets caught.

But others say that census figures can't be trusted because they are based on voluntary information.

Diana Hull, president of Californians for Population Stabilization, said that in Santa Barbara, for example, families of 20 to 30 illegal immigrants live in a two- or three-bedroom home and would have no reason to give accurate information to the Census.

"Why in the world would they even answer the question, or why would they tell you they're in violation of all the residential planning rules in the neighborhood?" she said.

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