U.S. illegal immigrant population declines

Crossing the border illegally - in or out. // Source: unambig.wordpress.com

The population of unauthorized workers in the United States declined in the year ending January 2009, according to a new report from the Department of Homeland Security. An estimated 10.8 million unauthorized immigrants were in the United States in January 2009 compared with 11.6 million the previous year.

That decrease — nearly 7 percent — is probably related to the country’s declining economy in the first year of the recession. Other scholars have found a correlation between arrests at the Mexican border and labor market in the United States.

The New York Times’s Catherine Rampell writes that of the 10.8 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States in 2009, about 37 percent are believed to have entered the country in the last decade. Forty-four percent entered the United States during the 1990s and 19 percent during the 1980s.

The report had some other interesting numbers about the demographics of unauthorized immigrants.

• Most of the immigrants were born in the Americas, including Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America.
• People born in Mexico represented 62 percent of unauthorized immigrants in 2009, versus 55 percent in 2000. In a distant second was El Salvador, whose native-born represented about 5 percent of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States in both 2009 and 2000.
• Among unauthorized immigrants, men outnumbered women in every age group except those 55 and older:
• The bulk of unauthorized immigrants were in their mid-20s to mid-40s, among the prime working years.