Thread: Illegal Immigration Has Increased and Exceeds Legal immig

http://www.kfmb.com/stories/story.24507.html

Report: Illegal Immigration Has Increased

Last Updated:
09-27-05 at 8:23AM

The pace of illegal immigration to the United States has increased despite tighter security measures and it generally parallels the pace of economic growth and the availability of jobs, a report said Tuesday.

The report by the Pew Hispanic Center also found that the stronger security steps since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 have had the effect of reducing legal immigration.

Overall, immigration to the United States declined along with the economy after 2000, but the report says the number of people trying to get into the country is on the upswing again.

Immigration _ both legal and illegal _ topped 1.5 million people in 1999 and 2000, according to the report. The number of people entering the United States then plummeted to 1.1 million people by 2003, the same level it was at in 1992.

Immigration levels bounced back to 1.2 million in 2004, but the report cautioned that it is difficult to predict whether the recent upswing is part of a new trend.

"The extremely high (immigration) flows at the end of the past decade were not the norm, nor part of a long-term trend, but rather the peak of a momentary increase that lasted for only a few years," said the report, authored by demographer Jeffrey Passal and Roberto Suro, a former journalist who heads the Pew Hispanic Center. "Thus, even as the United States consistently experiences historically high rates of migration, flows are subject to considerable variation."

The report documents immigration levels from 1992 to 2004, generating estimates from a variety of Census data. The report acknowledges weaknesses in the data, especially when it comes to estimating annual changes in the number of illegal immigrants trying to enter the country.

The Pew Hispanic Center is a nonpartisan research organization supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Immigration levels closely mirror economic conditions in the United States _ as the economy improves, immigration increases _ suggesting that the lure of jobs is a strong factor in attracting people to this country, the report says. The U.S. economy appears to be a stronger factor than economic conditions in the countries sending immigrants here, the report says.

Among the reports findings:

_Since 2001, the number of legal permanent residents entering the United States has declined from 578,000 to 455,000, while the number of illegal immigrants has increased from 549,000 to 562,000. Legal, temporary residents account for the remainder of people entering the country.

Declines in legal immigration "appear to reflect processing backlogs, security delays and other developments that followed the Sept. 11 attacks," the report says.

_Mexico accounted for about a third of all U.S. immigrants, a percentage that was steady from 1992 to 2004.

_More immigrants are shunning states with large immigrant communities, such as New York and California, and moving to states with smaller foreign-born populations, such as North Carolina and Iowa.

The illegal immigrants are just trying to avoid areas where there is an oversupply of labor as the result of the previous waves of illegal aliens. Many probably are relocators who having learned to speak basic English have a wider choice of places to find jobs.

The US government should be confiscating all assets of any employer caught employing illegals. If this was the case, as in drug busts, you wouldn't find any employers breaking the law. The only way to lick illegal immigration is to enforce our existing laws.

I found a couple more articles that are almost identical but posted them to stress one point that might have been missed the first time around. Illegal immigration numbers are exceeding legal immigration totals.

http://www.nola.com

Report: Illegal immigration has increased
9/27/2005, 6:18 p.m. CT
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
The Associated Press



WASHINGTON (AP) â€â€

Quote:
Illegal immigrants are increasing despite tighter border security and now outnumber foreigners moving to the United States legally.

It's called the Bush Immigration Plan. It's going right on schedule, right on target.

Some demographers say that family and village networks are so entrenched that immigration will rise despite the economy.

That's why it is important to interrupt the entrenchment process and do some detrenching immediately rather than talking about amnesties and family values that don't stop at the border and other nonsense. Those things just encourage more entrenchment which leads to more entrenchment which leads to more entrenchment which doesn't stop until this country is turned into the place the illegals are leaving. Those among us who want to live in that environment can just sneak into Mexico rather than bringing that environment here. Actually, I doubt that many (except for the La Raza first and foremost and Aztlan types) who advocate free for all immigration really want what they will inevitably get -- they are just too near term greedy, too PC brainwashed, or just too myopic and dull witted to realize the future consequences of what they ask for today.

Another point about that statement is that the more entrenched these networks become, the less effective and viable it will become to get illegals removed merely by preventing them from getting jobs. In attempting to check the numbers in the articles above (because they seemed low to me), I came across a 2003 CIS study which seems to corroborate somewhat the contention that illegals will come regardless of their ability to find work in that during the economic downturn in the U.S. when few jobs were created immigration remained high and steady. Or, a corrollary to that would be that immigrants are not so much coming to do unfilled jobs that we don't want to do, but rather to lower wages and/or create unemployment in jobs we once worked. Anyway, the following is an excerpt from the study which reinforces, IMO, the concept of entrenched networks in the sense that we already have so many illegal turned legal immigrants that the legals can provide a support network regardless of immediate job prospects for newly arrived illegals -- plus aid them in getting around whatever hiring prohibitions there may be. I doubt that the sympathies of recently turned legals are with their new country but rather with their still illegal countrymen.

The 1.5 million people who came from Mexico in the last three years strongly suggests that illegal immigration continues at very high levels from that country. In its report published in January of this year, the Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated that almost 70 percent of the total illegal-alien population was Mexican and that about two-thirds of all illegals who arrived in the late 1990s are from Mexico. It is a well-established fact that vast majority of recent arrivals from Mexico in Census Bureau data, such as the CPS, are illegal aliens. In contrast, legal Mexican immigrants are generally persons who have lived in the United States for some time as illegal aliens before getting their green card. Thus, for the most part, legal Mexicans report a year of arrival that is further back in time, reflecting their time in the United States as illegal aliens before they got legal status. It is very likely that at least 90 percent of the 1.5 million people from Mexico who arrived since 2000 are illegal aliens. This would mean that illegals from that country continue to account for nearly two-thirds of all new illegals.

I added the bold emphasis.