Gingrich’s Immigration Plan Could Benefit Millions, Study Finds

nytimes.com
By JULIA PRESTON
December 1, 2011, 2:35 pm

How many illegal immigrants could gain legal status under an idea proposed by Newt Gingrich? Perhaps as many as 3.5 million, according to figures published Thursday by the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.

Mr. Gingrich set himself apart from his leading rivals for the Republican presidential nomination last week by saying that he would open a path to legal status for illegal immigrants who had been in the country for many years, had strong family ties here — children and maybe grandchildren — and no criminal record. The Pew Center took up the challenge of calculating how many illegal immigrants might meet Mr. Gingrich’s standards.

About 35 percent of the estimated 10 million illegal immigrants in the United States who are adults have been here for 15 years or more, the center found, based on an analysis of 2010 census data. Almost two-thirds of adult illegal immigrant have been here for a decade or more, the center reported.

About 46 percent of adult illegal immigrants — some 4.7 million people — are parents of minor children, the center found. The number of illegal immigrants raising children is relatively high because they tend to be considerably younger than native-born Americans. (The median age of Americans is 46, while that of illegal immigrants is 36, the Pew Center found.)

Among the children of illegal immigrant parents, about 1 million are themselves here without legal documents, and about 4.5 million of the children are United States citizens, according to the report.

The Pew figures do not correspond exactly to what Mr. Gingrich suggested he would support. In a Republican debate last week, Mr. Gingrich said, “If you’ve been here for 25 years, and you got three kids and two grandkids, you’ve been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don’t think we are going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out.â€