8/11/08
Study finds 11 percent drop in illegal immigration
By Ines Min
A study released recently that showed an 11 percent decrease in the U.S. illegal immigrant population has raised questions from illegal immigration opponents and immigrants' rights activists.
According to the report[ Homeward Bound ]released last week by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based nonprofit research organization that has been criticized in the media for being anti-immigration, the immigrant population has decreased because of stricter immigration laws and a slowing economy.
The report's findings are disappointing for groups such as the American Friends Service Committee, an organization that promotes equality in the workplace for immigrants. Josefina Castillo, who is program coordinator for the Austin office of the organization, acknowledged that the study recognized the difficult challenge presented by attempting to estimate the immigrant population, but said the variety of ethnicities within the population makes it difficult to accurately account for all the immigrants.
The immigrant community is far too complex to make any generalizations about changing population sizes, Castillo said.
"I think this unifying way of looking at [the illegal immigrants] as a coherent population also deviates [from] the dialogue when you want to talk about statistics and truth," Castillo said.
Castillo said the status of the U.S. economy is the major determining factor of migration into or out of the U.S.
"I think that in the same way that some groups do not make the link between the economy and migration, the same can be said that we cannot make immediate links between enforcement and migration," she said.
Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee supports the center's research with news articles collected over the past few years echoing law enforcement's role in the decreasing population. The Web-based group has the largest archive of articles and statistics in existence about illegal immigration, said organization president William Gheen.
The committee's perspective is reinforced by more than 100 news articles collected by the committee, which Gheen said prove that, among other things, amnesty for illegal immigrants is not a viable solution for reducing the influx of illegal immigration into the U.S.
According to the study, illegal immigration overall is decreasing nationwide, but Gheen said some states such as California and Texas have increasing numbers of illegal immigrants. Ghenn said more relaxed policies in border states make them more attractive to undocumented workers living in states with stricter enforcement.
Showing posts with label Center for Immigration Studies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Center for Immigration Studies. Show all posts
August 1, 2008
CIS Report: Homeward Bound
Center for Immigration Studies
Homeward Bound: Recent Immigration Enforcement and the Decline in the Illegal Alien Population
By Steven A. Camarota, Karen Jensenius
July 2008
Backgrounders and Reports
http://cis.org/taxonomy/term/12
Download the pdf version
http://www.cis.org/articles/2008/back808.pdf
Homeward Bound: Recent Immigration Enforcement and the Decline in the Illegal Alien Population
By Steven A. Camarota, Karen Jensenius
July 2008
Backgrounders and Reports
http://cis.org/taxonomy/term/12
Download the pdf version
http://www.cis.org/articles/2008/back808.pdf
July 6, 2008
Amid employer objections, policing immigration targets the workplace
Crackdowns refuel debate about enforcement strategies and reliance on foreign-born labor
By Juan Castillo
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, July 06, 2008
If millions of illegal immigrants work in the United States, then there are vast numbers of illegal employers, too.
With that observation, immigrant advocates call attention to the obvious: The undocumented workers who harvest and cook food, build homes, mow lawns, bus tables and make hotel beds would not be here if somebody wasn't hiring them to perform these and many other unglamorous jobs.
Department of Homeland Security officials concede that the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who enter the country every year are seeking work. An estimated 5 percent of the U.S. work force — 9 percent in Texas — is unauthorized,according to the Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization that advocates reduced immigration.
But until recently, the role of employers in the immigration picture has largely escaped public prominence. Although a 1986 federal law prohibits employers from knowingly hiring unauthorized workers, for nearly two decades Washington has focused on a massive buildup in enforcement at the border, not the workplace.
Judging by the now-routine headlines of high-profile raids across the country — one at a Houston rag and used clothing plant netted 166 arrests two weeks ago — job sites are not the safe harbor they once were.
Workplace arrests have soared 869 percent since 2002. With Congress unable to agree on immigration law changes, state governments are applying their own pressure. In 2007, Texas and 18 other states enacted a total of 33 laws relating to immigration and employment issues, including worker verification by employers and contractors.
Under the 1986 federal legislation,employers do not have to verify the authenticity of the documents that job applicants present.(Many illegal immigrants use fake or stolen Social Security numbers.)
But the U.S. government is now asking employers to voluntarily check Social Security numbers of their new hires, using an Internet program known as E-Verify. One Department of Homeland Security proposal, currently in litigation, threatens businesses with prosecution if they do not fire workers whose names don't match Social Security records.
Ramped-up efforts to target the workplace have triggered the ire of some employers and business groups that say they must rely on immigrant workers to fill jobs and that the crackdowns are a threat to the economy. They say they are in the cross hairs for an illegal immigration problem they can't and shouldn't be expected to police.
And because of a thriving black market in fraudulent Social Security and identification documents that appear genuine, they say they can't trust tools like E-Verify to prevent fraud and stolen identities.
"The vast majority of employers do their damnedest to be in compliance with the laws. But they can't verify the (workers') documents," said Bill Hammond, chief executive of the Texas Association of Business, which represents more than 3,000 Texas corporations and more than 200 chambers of commerce.
Keeping America fed
Researchers estimate that 12 million illegal immigrants live in the United States, including 1.5 million in Texas, and two-thirds of them work. They are especially prevalent in industries such as construction, food services and agriculture: An estimated three out of four laborers on Texas and U.S. farms are in the country illegally.
"An enforcement-only agenda will disproportionately decimate the sector of the American economy that is, oh by the way, putting food on our table," said Craig Regelbrugge, co-chairman of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, which represents U.S. farm labor interests.
It would also have wider consequences, according to some employers and analysts.
"If you have roughly 150 million workers nationwide and if you suddenly take out 8 million and you don't have a mechanism to replace them — and we don't — it would have devastating effects on the economy," said Ray Perryman, an economist who heads the Waco-based economic analysis firm the Perryman Group.
In his report released in May on the impact of undocumented workers on the economy and businesses, Perryman said a number of industries would face substantial worker shortages if illegal workers disappeared, and Americans would have to be induced into the labor pool or given incentives to take jobs below their education and skill levels. Employers would have to pay substantially higher wages, hurting competitiveness in global markets, according to Perryman.
Federal officials say they are trying to protect U.S. workers and businesses who play by the rules and hire people who are legally entitled to work here.
"Drying up the job market for illegal workers would be the single most effective thing we could do to push back the tide of illegal aliens coming into the country," Julie Myers, the assistant secretary of homeland security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement , said in Austin recently.
'A lot of Chicken Little'
As with virtually everything in the illegal immigration debate, reactions to the workplace crackdowns generally track how one feels about efforts to enforce current laws and proposals to pass new ones.
"It's just a lot of Chicken Little as far as I'm concerned," Mark Krikorian, a leading critic of illegal immigration, said of warnings that eliminating illegal workers will cripple the economy. He said Perryman's study was prepared for a group representing Houston business interests, Americans for Immigration Reform, and suggested it was tailored to suit their agenda.
Perryman said he sought to objectively present economic data, pointing out that although his research shows illegal immigrants cost state and local governments billions of dollars, the undocumented work force still has a net positive effect on the economy.
"This is a very emotional issue, and people sometimes lose sight of the economic reality," Perryman said.
Krikorian, who heads the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, said employers benefited for years by paying illegal workers low wages with few benefits. It is not surprising, he said, that they bemoan efforts to now hold them accountable.
"The goal here is to change people's expectations and their behavior," said Krikorian. "Up to now, enforcement initiatives were short-lived, and businesses and illegal immigrants could keep their heads down until the storm passed over."
Immigrant rights advocates say the raids highlight a broken immigration system that is ill-suited to deal with economic factors that drive illegal immigration and that allows exploitation of undocumented workers. Employers who say they can't find enough native-born workers say the country needs more legal avenues for immigrants to work in the United States.
"It may be tired (to say it), but if we allow enough legal immigration, a lot of these problems will go away," Hammond said.
"We need to make sure that we know what the consequences are going to be when we remove all these folks from these jobs. ... Where are we going to get the labor?" said Frank Fuentes, who owns a small commercial construction business in Austin and is president of the U.S. Hispanic Contractors Association.
Like other employers and spokespersons for business and trade groups interviewed for this story, Fuentes emphasized that his organization does not condone immigration-related fraud. (Fuentes said he employs about 10 workers and managers — "everything else, we subcontract out." As is typical in the construction business, he relies on subcontractors to verify worker documents.)
Administration-backed attempts to overhaul the nation's immigration laws collapsed in Congress last year over provisions to legalize undocumented immigrants already here, a sticking point for opponents who consider that amnesty. Myers said Congress' failure to pass new laws left the Homeland Security Department no choice but to vigorously use the enforcement tools it has.
Regelbrugge said federal officials are trying to create chaos to force Congress to act. He painted the strategy this way: "If we can't fix the law, we're going to enforce the bad laws we've got."
'Filling those voids'
Protests against workplace crackdowns rekindle one of the most contentious points of the illegal immigration debate, one raised by President Bush years ago when he advocated immigration law reforms to "match willing workers with willing employers."
The claim: Undocumented immigrants fill jobs Americans won't do.
Critics of illegal immigration frame the argument another way: Americans won't do the jobs at the low wages employers pay illegal immigrants.
Employers flood job markets with low-paid illegal workers, driving down wages for native-born Americans and cutting them off from those jobs even if they wanted them, Krikorian said. Some Central Texas small-business owners say their livelihoods are threatened by competitors who undercut them, with payrolls full of low-paid undocumented workers.
Experts say illegal immigrants in the U.S. work force are paid a wide range of wages, from less than the federal minimum $5.85 per hour to $10 an hour or more.
"In almost every category, the wages paid to undocumented workers are one or two rungs lower than the prevailing market rate for native-born workers," said Bill Beardall, a labor law expert who heads the Equal Justice Center, a worker legal center based in Austin.
Beardall said benefits, working and safety conditions are generally poorer for undocumented immigrants, who fear speaking up for their rights.
Entry-level construction workers generally earn $12 an hour — "a good salary for someone with no skills" — and operators of bulldozers and heavy machinery can make $25 to $30 an hour, said Fuentes, the Austin builder.
Workers who pick crops make the equivalent of about $10 an hour, but the seasonal, physical labor puts off most Americans, said Regelbrugge. He doesn't agree with illegal immigration foes who declare that a native-born work force will materialize if only employers paid more.
"Americans who are interested in participating in the work force, these are the last jobs they're likely to fill because they have other opportunities," Regelbrugge said.
Perryman's report, citing research by the Center for Immigration Studies, said that 29 percent of adult immigrants do not have a high school diploma, compared to 8 percent of native-born Americans.
Other factors combine to put pressure on employers to fill jobs any way they can, Perryman said: Americans are getting older, growth in the domestic work force is modest and the unemployment rate is relatively low.
"The fundamental problem is the difference in levels of economic development in Mexico and the United States," said Robert H. Wilson, an expert in urban policy atthe LBJ School at the University of Texas. "If the United States was not such an attractive market, we would not have the extent of this problem of illegal immigration from south of the border."
At his offices in North Austin, the 45-year-old Fuentes said building is in his blood. "I've been in this business all my life," said the native South Texan. So was his father.
But it is certainly not for everybody. Raising roofs and pouring concrete in the blistering Central Texas heat and humidity is grueling, sometimes dangerous, work, Fuentes said.
Fuentes said it shouldn't come as a surprise that some industries have to rely on foreign-born workers to fill hard jobs.
Americans want better for their children, he said.
"Who in this country wants their kid to be working in a meatpacking company where you're killing cows or pigs? These kinds of jobs are being filled by immigrants who see that as a way to be in this country. ... They're filling those voids."
jcastillo@statesman.com; 445-3635
By Juan Castillo
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, July 06, 2008
If millions of illegal immigrants work in the United States, then there are vast numbers of illegal employers, too.
With that observation, immigrant advocates call attention to the obvious: The undocumented workers who harvest and cook food, build homes, mow lawns, bus tables and make hotel beds would not be here if somebody wasn't hiring them to perform these and many other unglamorous jobs.
Department of Homeland Security officials concede that the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who enter the country every year are seeking work. An estimated 5 percent of the U.S. work force — 9 percent in Texas — is unauthorized,according to the Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization that advocates reduced immigration.
But until recently, the role of employers in the immigration picture has largely escaped public prominence. Although a 1986 federal law prohibits employers from knowingly hiring unauthorized workers, for nearly two decades Washington has focused on a massive buildup in enforcement at the border, not the workplace.
Judging by the now-routine headlines of high-profile raids across the country — one at a Houston rag and used clothing plant netted 166 arrests two weeks ago — job sites are not the safe harbor they once were.
Workplace arrests have soared 869 percent since 2002. With Congress unable to agree on immigration law changes, state governments are applying their own pressure. In 2007, Texas and 18 other states enacted a total of 33 laws relating to immigration and employment issues, including worker verification by employers and contractors.
Under the 1986 federal legislation,employers do not have to verify the authenticity of the documents that job applicants present.(Many illegal immigrants use fake or stolen Social Security numbers.)
But the U.S. government is now asking employers to voluntarily check Social Security numbers of their new hires, using an Internet program known as E-Verify. One Department of Homeland Security proposal, currently in litigation, threatens businesses with prosecution if they do not fire workers whose names don't match Social Security records.
Ramped-up efforts to target the workplace have triggered the ire of some employers and business groups that say they must rely on immigrant workers to fill jobs and that the crackdowns are a threat to the economy. They say they are in the cross hairs for an illegal immigration problem they can't and shouldn't be expected to police.
And because of a thriving black market in fraudulent Social Security and identification documents that appear genuine, they say they can't trust tools like E-Verify to prevent fraud and stolen identities.
"The vast majority of employers do their damnedest to be in compliance with the laws. But they can't verify the (workers') documents," said Bill Hammond, chief executive of the Texas Association of Business, which represents more than 3,000 Texas corporations and more than 200 chambers of commerce.
Keeping America fed
Researchers estimate that 12 million illegal immigrants live in the United States, including 1.5 million in Texas, and two-thirds of them work. They are especially prevalent in industries such as construction, food services and agriculture: An estimated three out of four laborers on Texas and U.S. farms are in the country illegally.
"An enforcement-only agenda will disproportionately decimate the sector of the American economy that is, oh by the way, putting food on our table," said Craig Regelbrugge, co-chairman of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, which represents U.S. farm labor interests.
It would also have wider consequences, according to some employers and analysts.
"If you have roughly 150 million workers nationwide and if you suddenly take out 8 million and you don't have a mechanism to replace them — and we don't — it would have devastating effects on the economy," said Ray Perryman, an economist who heads the Waco-based economic analysis firm the Perryman Group.
In his report released in May on the impact of undocumented workers on the economy and businesses, Perryman said a number of industries would face substantial worker shortages if illegal workers disappeared, and Americans would have to be induced into the labor pool or given incentives to take jobs below their education and skill levels. Employers would have to pay substantially higher wages, hurting competitiveness in global markets, according to Perryman.
Federal officials say they are trying to protect U.S. workers and businesses who play by the rules and hire people who are legally entitled to work here.
"Drying up the job market for illegal workers would be the single most effective thing we could do to push back the tide of illegal aliens coming into the country," Julie Myers, the assistant secretary of homeland security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement , said in Austin recently.
'A lot of Chicken Little'
As with virtually everything in the illegal immigration debate, reactions to the workplace crackdowns generally track how one feels about efforts to enforce current laws and proposals to pass new ones.
"It's just a lot of Chicken Little as far as I'm concerned," Mark Krikorian, a leading critic of illegal immigration, said of warnings that eliminating illegal workers will cripple the economy. He said Perryman's study was prepared for a group representing Houston business interests, Americans for Immigration Reform, and suggested it was tailored to suit their agenda.
Perryman said he sought to objectively present economic data, pointing out that although his research shows illegal immigrants cost state and local governments billions of dollars, the undocumented work force still has a net positive effect on the economy.
"This is a very emotional issue, and people sometimes lose sight of the economic reality," Perryman said.
Krikorian, who heads the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, said employers benefited for years by paying illegal workers low wages with few benefits. It is not surprising, he said, that they bemoan efforts to now hold them accountable.
"The goal here is to change people's expectations and their behavior," said Krikorian. "Up to now, enforcement initiatives were short-lived, and businesses and illegal immigrants could keep their heads down until the storm passed over."
Immigrant rights advocates say the raids highlight a broken immigration system that is ill-suited to deal with economic factors that drive illegal immigration and that allows exploitation of undocumented workers. Employers who say they can't find enough native-born workers say the country needs more legal avenues for immigrants to work in the United States.
"It may be tired (to say it), but if we allow enough legal immigration, a lot of these problems will go away," Hammond said.
"We need to make sure that we know what the consequences are going to be when we remove all these folks from these jobs. ... Where are we going to get the labor?" said Frank Fuentes, who owns a small commercial construction business in Austin and is president of the U.S. Hispanic Contractors Association.
Like other employers and spokespersons for business and trade groups interviewed for this story, Fuentes emphasized that his organization does not condone immigration-related fraud. (Fuentes said he employs about 10 workers and managers — "everything else, we subcontract out." As is typical in the construction business, he relies on subcontractors to verify worker documents.)
Administration-backed attempts to overhaul the nation's immigration laws collapsed in Congress last year over provisions to legalize undocumented immigrants already here, a sticking point for opponents who consider that amnesty. Myers said Congress' failure to pass new laws left the Homeland Security Department no choice but to vigorously use the enforcement tools it has.
Regelbrugge said federal officials are trying to create chaos to force Congress to act. He painted the strategy this way: "If we can't fix the law, we're going to enforce the bad laws we've got."
'Filling those voids'
Protests against workplace crackdowns rekindle one of the most contentious points of the illegal immigration debate, one raised by President Bush years ago when he advocated immigration law reforms to "match willing workers with willing employers."
The claim: Undocumented immigrants fill jobs Americans won't do.
Critics of illegal immigration frame the argument another way: Americans won't do the jobs at the low wages employers pay illegal immigrants.
Employers flood job markets with low-paid illegal workers, driving down wages for native-born Americans and cutting them off from those jobs even if they wanted them, Krikorian said. Some Central Texas small-business owners say their livelihoods are threatened by competitors who undercut them, with payrolls full of low-paid undocumented workers.
Experts say illegal immigrants in the U.S. work force are paid a wide range of wages, from less than the federal minimum $5.85 per hour to $10 an hour or more.
"In almost every category, the wages paid to undocumented workers are one or two rungs lower than the prevailing market rate for native-born workers," said Bill Beardall, a labor law expert who heads the Equal Justice Center, a worker legal center based in Austin.
Beardall said benefits, working and safety conditions are generally poorer for undocumented immigrants, who fear speaking up for their rights.
Entry-level construction workers generally earn $12 an hour — "a good salary for someone with no skills" — and operators of bulldozers and heavy machinery can make $25 to $30 an hour, said Fuentes, the Austin builder.
Workers who pick crops make the equivalent of about $10 an hour, but the seasonal, physical labor puts off most Americans, said Regelbrugge. He doesn't agree with illegal immigration foes who declare that a native-born work force will materialize if only employers paid more.
"Americans who are interested in participating in the work force, these are the last jobs they're likely to fill because they have other opportunities," Regelbrugge said.
Perryman's report, citing research by the Center for Immigration Studies, said that 29 percent of adult immigrants do not have a high school diploma, compared to 8 percent of native-born Americans.
Other factors combine to put pressure on employers to fill jobs any way they can, Perryman said: Americans are getting older, growth in the domestic work force is modest and the unemployment rate is relatively low.
"The fundamental problem is the difference in levels of economic development in Mexico and the United States," said Robert H. Wilson, an expert in urban policy atthe LBJ School at the University of Texas. "If the United States was not such an attractive market, we would not have the extent of this problem of illegal immigration from south of the border."
At his offices in North Austin, the 45-year-old Fuentes said building is in his blood. "I've been in this business all my life," said the native South Texan. So was his father.
But it is certainly not for everybody. Raising roofs and pouring concrete in the blistering Central Texas heat and humidity is grueling, sometimes dangerous, work, Fuentes said.
Fuentes said it shouldn't come as a surprise that some industries have to rely on foreign-born workers to fill hard jobs.
Americans want better for their children, he said.
"Who in this country wants their kid to be working in a meatpacking company where you're killing cows or pigs? These kinds of jobs are being filled by immigrants who see that as a way to be in this country. ... They're filling those voids."
jcastillo@statesman.com; 445-3635
November 29, 2007
Half of Immigrants in Texas Are Illegal, Report Finds
By BOB DART
Cox News Service
Thursday, November 29, 2007
WASHINGTON — Half of the nearly 3.5 million immigrants living in Texas are in the country illegally, the Center for Immigration Studies says in a report released Thursday.
Based on the latest Census Bureau data, the report said Texas has one of the fastest growing immigrant populations of any state. It said that 50 percent of the state's foreign-born population — slightly more than 1.7 million people — are illegal immigrants. Only Arizona at 65 percent, North Carolina at 58 percent and Georgia at 53 percent had a higher proportion of illegal immigrants in their immigrant populations.
Many people within the undocumented population are unskilled workers and tend to go to states where they can find those types of jobs, explained Flavia Jimenez, a senior policy analyst with the National Council of La Raza, a nonpartisan advocacy group for Hispanic Americans. And many go where there are already family members.
The influx of immigrants into Texas reflects the national trend, the report showed. The nation's immigrant population — legal and illegal — reached a record of 37.9 million in 2007. Nearly one in three of these newcomers is here illegally. Half of the immigrants from Mexico and Central America are in the country illegally and one-third of those from South America are illegal immigrants.
The report documents this surge of new arrivals and describes its impact.
"The last seven years have been the highest period of immigration in American history," the report concluded. "Immigrants and their young children (under 18) now account for one-fifth of the school-age population, one-fourth of those in poverty and nearly one-third of those without health insurance."
Immigration accounts for nearly all of the national increase in public school enrollment over the past two decades, the report said. In 2007, there were 10.8 million school-age children from immigrant families in the United States — about one in five of the nation's school-age kids.
In Texas, 26.7 percent of the school-age (5-17) population had immigrant fathers. About half of these immigrant children — 13 percent of the state's total school age population — were illegal immigrants or the offspring of illegal immigrants.
About one-third of all families nationally headed by an immigrant use at least one welfare program — compared to less than one-fifth for native households, the report said. The percentage in Texas exceeds the national average with 39.2 percent of immigrant households using at least one welfare program compared to 21.1 percent of native households.
"Setting aside the lower socio-economic status of immigrants, no nation has ever attempted to incorporate nearly 38 million newcomers into its society," the report warned.
The report is called "Immigrants in the United States, 2007: A Profile of America's Foreign-Born Population." It was written by Seven Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan think tank that advocates reductions in immigration. The data came from the March 2007 Current Population Survey collected by the Census Bureau.
"There is nothing surprising in the report. These are the same kind of findings we have seen with other research," said Jimenez. "This is further proof that, in our opinion, this country needs to fix its immigration system."
The report said immigrants and their U.S.-born children under the age of 18 now make up 21 percent of Texas' population. Children born in the United States are citizens even if their parents are illegal immigrants.
The number of immigrants in Texas has risen rapidly in a little over a decade — growing from 2.2 million in 1995 to 2.6 million in 2000 to nearly 3.5 million in 2007. Since 2000, the state's immigrant population has increased 32.7 percent.
The median household income for immigrant households in Texas is lower than the median household income for native households — $32,998 for immigrants compared to $46,332 for native households. Since the number of people in a household is 3.3 for immigrants compared to 2.5 for natives, the per-person median income is a more dramatic 46 percent higher for natives — $18,533 compared to $9,996.
In Texas, 48.4 percent of the immigrants age 18 or older did not have a high school diploma, compared to 10.5 percent of the native population. The report said 56.8 percent of the state's immigrants and their children lived in or near poverty, compared to 32.6 percent of the native population and its children.
In Texas, 61.1 percent of immigrants and their children are uninsured or on Medicaid, double the 30.2 percent of natives and their children in the same circumstances. As citizens, the children of illegal immigrants are eligible for Medicaid.
"For state governments, Medicaid is a particular concern because between one-third to one-half of the program's costs are typically borne by state taxpayers," the report said.
Cox News Service
Thursday, November 29, 2007
WASHINGTON — Half of the nearly 3.5 million immigrants living in Texas are in the country illegally, the Center for Immigration Studies says in a report released Thursday.
Based on the latest Census Bureau data, the report said Texas has one of the fastest growing immigrant populations of any state. It said that 50 percent of the state's foreign-born population — slightly more than 1.7 million people — are illegal immigrants. Only Arizona at 65 percent, North Carolina at 58 percent and Georgia at 53 percent had a higher proportion of illegal immigrants in their immigrant populations.
Many people within the undocumented population are unskilled workers and tend to go to states where they can find those types of jobs, explained Flavia Jimenez, a senior policy analyst with the National Council of La Raza, a nonpartisan advocacy group for Hispanic Americans. And many go where there are already family members.
The influx of immigrants into Texas reflects the national trend, the report showed. The nation's immigrant population — legal and illegal — reached a record of 37.9 million in 2007. Nearly one in three of these newcomers is here illegally. Half of the immigrants from Mexico and Central America are in the country illegally and one-third of those from South America are illegal immigrants.
The report documents this surge of new arrivals and describes its impact.
"The last seven years have been the highest period of immigration in American history," the report concluded. "Immigrants and their young children (under 18) now account for one-fifth of the school-age population, one-fourth of those in poverty and nearly one-third of those without health insurance."
Immigration accounts for nearly all of the national increase in public school enrollment over the past two decades, the report said. In 2007, there were 10.8 million school-age children from immigrant families in the United States — about one in five of the nation's school-age kids.
In Texas, 26.7 percent of the school-age (5-17) population had immigrant fathers. About half of these immigrant children — 13 percent of the state's total school age population — were illegal immigrants or the offspring of illegal immigrants.
About one-third of all families nationally headed by an immigrant use at least one welfare program — compared to less than one-fifth for native households, the report said. The percentage in Texas exceeds the national average with 39.2 percent of immigrant households using at least one welfare program compared to 21.1 percent of native households.
"Setting aside the lower socio-economic status of immigrants, no nation has ever attempted to incorporate nearly 38 million newcomers into its society," the report warned.
The report is called "Immigrants in the United States, 2007: A Profile of America's Foreign-Born Population." It was written by Seven Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan think tank that advocates reductions in immigration. The data came from the March 2007 Current Population Survey collected by the Census Bureau.
"There is nothing surprising in the report. These are the same kind of findings we have seen with other research," said Jimenez. "This is further proof that, in our opinion, this country needs to fix its immigration system."
The report said immigrants and their U.S.-born children under the age of 18 now make up 21 percent of Texas' population. Children born in the United States are citizens even if their parents are illegal immigrants.
The number of immigrants in Texas has risen rapidly in a little over a decade — growing from 2.2 million in 1995 to 2.6 million in 2000 to nearly 3.5 million in 2007. Since 2000, the state's immigrant population has increased 32.7 percent.
The median household income for immigrant households in Texas is lower than the median household income for native households — $32,998 for immigrants compared to $46,332 for native households. Since the number of people in a household is 3.3 for immigrants compared to 2.5 for natives, the per-person median income is a more dramatic 46 percent higher for natives — $18,533 compared to $9,996.
In Texas, 48.4 percent of the immigrants age 18 or older did not have a high school diploma, compared to 10.5 percent of the native population. The report said 56.8 percent of the state's immigrants and their children lived in or near poverty, compared to 32.6 percent of the native population and its children.
In Texas, 61.1 percent of immigrants and their children are uninsured or on Medicaid, double the 30.2 percent of natives and their children in the same circumstances. As citizens, the children of illegal immigrants are eligible for Medicaid.
"For state governments, Medicaid is a particular concern because between one-third to one-half of the program's costs are typically borne by state taxpayers," the report said.
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