July 10, 2007

QUESTION: How was the number 12 million arrived at for the total of illegal immigrants in this country? If they snuck in, who counted them?

ANSWER: The number comes from the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, which used U.S. Census Bureau data.

The center first estimated a total of 11.1 million illegal immigrants in the country in March 2005.

A simplified version of the calculations is that researchers at the center came up with that total by subtracting the number of legal immigrants from the census total of foreign-born population.

Since then, the center has used monthly population estimates to keep the illegal immigrant total up to date -- now about 12 million.

The center's numbers are widely used by news agencies, lawmakers and educators.

The center figures that Michigan has between 100,000 and 150,000 illegal immigrants.

It estimates that 850,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in the United States each year since 2000.

You can get more information at http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID61.

From Cox News Service

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti ... 007/NEWS05