Thread: Immigrant population dipped last year, Census says

Immigrant population dipped last year, Census says

Updated 11m ago
By Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg, USA TODAY

The share of the U.S. population composed of immigrants dropped slightly in 2008, reversing a 40-year trend that helped fuel the nation's explosive growth and diversity.

The foreign-born dropped from 12.6% in 2007 to 12.5%, according to Census data out Monday. The share had been rising every decade since 1970, when it hit a low of 4.7%.

RESULTS: U.S. Census Bureau's 2008 Survey

The dip is more pronounced in areas that have taken a big economic hit in the recession, such as Los Angeles and Riverside in California and Phoenix. Areas doing better such as Houston and Dallas did not experience as large a drop — an indication that immigrant numbers could rise again as soon as the economy rebounds.

"It's short-term, but it's a real marker in terms of immigration slowdown," says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution.


INTERACTIVE DATA: U.S. Census Bureau's 2008 Survey
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Since 2000, every state has shown growth in immigrant populations, he says. From 2007 to 2008, however, the share of the foreign-born dropped in 25 states and in 54 of the 102 largest metro areas.

Mexican immigrants, who held a significant share of jobs in the hard-hit construction industry, showed the largest overall decline among the foreign-born: down about 300,000 to 11.4 million.

Arrivals of undocumented workers "are way down," says Jeffrey Passel, demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center.

The number of Indian immigrants, who tend to be more educated and skilled, rose by about 100,000 to more than 1.6 million. "It's not like nobody wants to come here anymore," Frey says.

Tucson resident Bruce Bueno, 54, has friends and family from Mexico, and he knows several who are less likely to come to the USA than in previous years.

"A lot of immigrants are discouraged by the economy," he says. Facing the perils of crossing the scorching Sonoran Desert to enter illegally may no longer be worth it. "It's just too expensive," Bueno says. "Might as well just stay there."

Research based on other Census surveys indicates that the foreign-born who are leaving tend to be less-educated Hispanics ages 18 to 40, says Steven Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that wants to limit immigration.

"What that implies very strongly is that it's a significant decline in the illegal population," he says, attributing the drop to stricter border enforcement and a dismal job market.

Contributing: Jack Gillum in Tucson

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/cen ... nsus_N.htm

Even if we have one illegal in our country it's one illegal too many.

PS
I read that the cost of one illegal per year, if not in college ( they cost us more if in college) is about $22,000 per year that American tax payers pay for the illegal. I am not sure if this is factual or not.

The gov't, the businesses and the illegals all benefit and the American people get stuck with the bills.

Don't believe the Census!

The construction industry should be the one industry most aggressively targeted by ICE. Illegals are still doing most all of the construction work in the residential sector and rather than being hired by a business in a building that can be raided, they are hired by small businesses run by American subcontractors. While raids on big name businesses make the news, ICE should be going after these small businesses that employ the majority of illegals!

And DOT are crooks, and State ESC offices.

CENSUS

Immigrant population in California declines

Survey data point to a dramatic shift in the nation and show the recession's effect on foreign-born residents.

By Don Lee and Alana Semuels
September 22, 2009

Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington - More than three decades of rapid growth in the country's foreign-born population came to a halt last year, census data show, as surging unemployment made the U.S. economy less attractive to outsiders.

In California, which has a long history of attracting immigrants, the number of foreign-born residents actually declined, shrinking 1.6%.

"This is clearly a consequence of the economy, with the biggest impact on Mexican and low-skilled immigrants," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who analyzed the census figures, which are to be officially released today. "It shows that these immigrants respond to the economy."

Nationwide, the number of foreign-born residents fell an estimated 99,000, or 0.3%, to 37.97 million.

The data come from the Census Bureau's annual survey of about 3 million Americans, not the entire population. The survey's margin of sampling error is high enough to make it possible that the number of foreign-born people in the country actually remained unchanged from 2007 to 2008 rather than declined.

Nonetheless, the figures suggest a dramatic break from a long wave of increasing migration to the U.S., particularly from Asia and Latin America, that followed a major change in immigration policy in 1965.

In the two decades that preceded 2008, the country's foreign-born population grew an average of almost 1 million a year, including by nearly 512,000 in 2007.

In California, the number of foreign-born people dropped 165,000 last year to 9.9 million. The reversal in the state was driven by several Southern California counties with sharp declines, such as Los Angeles, with a slide of 3%, San Bernardino, down 3.6%, and Ventura, down 4.1%. Orange and Riverside counties showed smaller decreases.

But the slowing of the increase in California's foreign-born population began well before the latest recession, said Dowell Myers, a professor and urban demographer at USC.

In the 1980s, for example, many immigrants targeted California because of their family and cultural ties to the state's already established immigrant communities. But during the aerospace-led downturn of the early 1990s, immigrants began moving more throughout the country, where they found employment more plentiful and housing more affordable.

"Now, they have contacts across America who say, 'Hey, I can get you a job and a house for one-third the price,' " Myers said.

The trend of immigrants' following the availability of jobs, even if it means settling in areas relatively new to foreigners, has continued into this decade.

"The economic drivers for where immigrants decide to settle have increased in importance," said Sarah Bohn, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

As a result, California's working-age immigrant population grew an average of only 2% a year in this decade through 2007, down from 4.4% in the 1990s and 9.5% in the '80s.

The new census data, which come from the bureau's American Community Survey, an annual poll begun this decade, show the biggest drops last year in foreign-born residents were in California, Arizona and Florida -- three of the states hit hardest by the recession. Texas, whose economy has outperformed most other states, saw the biggest gain, followed by Georgia and New York.

Some groups supporting greater limits on immigration seized on the new figures, saying they threw cold water on the argument that illegal immigrants should be given amnesty because they are here to stay, and that little can be done to change that.

"Many of us always thought illegal immigrants were anchored in the U.S.," said Steve Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that seeks fewer immigrants. "This new data suggest that's not the case."

The statistics "imply very strongly that fewer people are coming and significantly more are going home," he added.

Other researchers disputed that notion, saying there is no evidence that an increased number of foreign-born residents from Mexico, who constitute most illegal immigrants, are returning there.

"What appears is that the number of new immigrants has declined substantially, especially undocumented immigrants," said D'Vera Cohn, a senior writer at the Pew Research Center.

She and demographer Jeffrey Passel reported in a recent study that data from the Mexican government show no rise in the number of arrivals home from 2006 through early 2009.

Other highlights from the Census Bureau survey:

* More workers turned to mass transit and carpooling last year as gas prices soared. The number of workers driving to work by themselves slid to 75.5% in 2008, the lowest level in a decade, from 76.1% in 2007. The percentage of carpoolers increased to 10.7% from 10.4%.

* The percentage of women ages 15 and older in the population who had never married rose to 28.1% last year, up from 27.6% in 2007 and 27.3% in 2006.

* The inflation-adjusted median household income fell in five states -- California, Florida, Indiana, Arizona and Michigan -- in 2008 from 2007. Just one state had a decline the year before. The median household income in California last year was $61,021.

Five states -- Kansas, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York and Texas -- posted a gain in household income last year, down from 33 states in 2007.

* The American Community Survey has shown wide fluctuations from year to year in the increase in the country's foreign-born population. The smallest gain was 374,391 in 2001. The largest was 1.86 million in 2006.

don.lee@latimes.com

alana.semuels@latimes.com.

Times staff writer Doug Smith and Times data analyst Sandra Poindexter contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-c ... 4111.story

Many illegals left California and came to the Southern states to work in construction. You still see them on most all job sites. This article talks about the number of foreign born decreasing; wonder if this true for American born anchor babies?

Ya right!!