Number of illegal immigrants in U.S. reaches 12 million

The number of illegal immigrants in the United States has soared close to twelve million, a study released by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center last week found. The survey was released a day before the Senate begins drafting historic legislation aimed at curbing illegal immigration by tightening border security and creating guest worker programs. It estimates that 500,000 migrants have entered this country illegally each year since 2000. Most of these immigrants come for jobs in agriculture, cleaning, construction, or food preparation jobs and bring along their families, said Jeffrey Passel, the author of the report and a senior research associate at the center.

Analysis of the March 2005 Current Population Survey shows that there were 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States a year ago. Based on analysis of other data sources that offer indications of the pace of growth in the foreign-born population, the Center developed an estimate of 11.5 to 12 million for the unauthorized population as of March 2006.

In the March 2005 estimate, two-thirds (66 percent) of the unauthorized population had been in the country for ten years or less, and the largest share, 40 percent of the total or 4.4 million people had been in the country five years or less. There were 5.4 million adult males in the unauthorized population in 2005, accounting for 49 percent of the total. There were 3.9 million adult females accounting for 35 percent of the population. There were 1.8 million children who were unauthorized, 16 percent of the total. In addition, there were 3.1 million children who are U.S. citizens by birth living in families in which the head of the family or a spouse was unauthorized.

About 7.2 million unauthorized migrants were employed in March 2005, accounting for about 4.9 percent of the civilian labor force. They made up a large share of all workers in a few more detailed occupational categories, including 24 percent of all workers employed in farming occupations, 17 percent in cleaning, 14 percent in construction and 12 percent in food preparation.

-read the report at Pew Web site