Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

Las Vegas Sol:

Pew report: Number of immigrants in U.S. illegally holding steady

Majority of population has lived here more than a decade

The number of immigrants living in the country illegally has held relatively steady in the last few years, and the majority of the unauthorized population has lived here for more than a decade, according to new research from the Pew Hispanic Center.

According to Pew figures, 11.3 million immigrants were illegally residing in the U.S. as of March 2013, slightly more than 11.2 million figure Pew reported in 2012 and exactly the same as the number in 2009.

For decades the number of immigrants living in the United States illegally was steadily rising, growing from 3.5 million in 1990 to 12.2 million in 2007. After the Great Recession, however, the number dropped and then remained stagnant.

In 2003 immigrant adults in the country illegally had been living here for a median time of less than eight years. Today, the median amount of time spent in the United States is 13 years. That figure has risen steadily as the population growth tailed off in 2007. Overall, 62 percent of adult unauthorized immigrants have been in the country for more than a decade, and 16 percent have been here for less than five years.

Share of Long-Term Unauthorized Immigrants Surpasses Share of Short-Term Immigrants

As President Barack Obama has contemplated, but delayed, executive action on immigration, there has been speculation that he would extend deportation relief to parents of U.S. citizen children and parents of young immigrants accepted into the deferred action for childhood arrivals program, known as DACA.

Pew Research Center estimates that 38 percent of unauthorized adults, 4 million, live with their U.S.-born children, up from 30 percent in 2000. Additionally, approximately 450,000 adult immigrants in the country illegally live with their unauthorized immigrant children who are protected from deportation under the deferred action program or who have Temporary Protected Status, a program that has been mostly applied to Central Americans for immigrants from countries where the conditions make it hard for them to return. For example, TPS has been awarded to those fleeing significant natural disasters.

A Rise in U.S.-born Children of Unauthorized Immigrants, and Decline in Unauthorized Children

The Pew Research Center bases its estimates on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and Current Population Survey, comparing estimates of the legal immigrant population with surveys and estimates of the total immigrant population.

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