Illegal Immigration Levels Off in 2010, Fewer Living in Florida

March 03, 2011 (Press-News.org) Immigration debates are often fueled more by rhetoric than by actual facts and figures. Fortunately, the non-partisan Pew Research Center (which does not take positions on policy issues) offers objective statistics on immigration in their annual survey of national and state trends in immigration, as published by the Pew Hispanic Center.

The national highlights from Pew's 2010 immigration report include:

- Unauthorized immigrants make up about 3.7 percent of the nation's population --approximately 11.2 million persons. That number is statistically unchanged from last year, and follows a two-year decline from a high of 12 million unauthorized immigrants in 2007.

- Unauthorized immigrants are approximately 28 percent of the foreign-born population of the U.S. This percentage is also lower than in 2007, when unauthorized immigrants made up 31 percent of the country's foreign-born population.

- Unauthorized immigrants make up a little less than 4 percent of the nation's population, but because they tend to be young and have high birthrates, their newborns represent a greater share of all births in the U.S., with approximately 8 percent of all births having at least one unauthorized immigrant parent. Although, the majority of unauthorized immigrants who became parents while in the U.S. have been in the states for several years -- 61 percent came to the U.S. before 2004.

- In 2010, there were 14.9 million naturalized citizens (citizens born outside of the U.S. who became citizens after moving here). This number is up by almost 9 percent over the 2007 figure.

Looking at individual states, Florida's immigrant population has declined more than any other state, going from 1,050,000 unauthorized immigrants in 2007 to 825,000 in 2010 -- a fall of 22 percent.

By contrast, North Carolina's immigrant population has essentially held steady during that time, going from 375,000 unauthorized immigrants in 2007 to 325,000 in 2010. (Although a slight drop, these numbers are within the statistical margin of error.) Nationwide, North Carolina has the ninth highest population of unauthorized immigrants, and is ranked eighth in number of illegal immigrants in the labor force, constituting 5.4 percent of the state's workforce.

Article provided by Robert Brown LLC
Visit us at www.brown-immigration.com