A recent Pew Hispanic Center report suggests that the number of illegal
A recent Pew Hispanic Center report suggests that the number of illegal immigrants entering the United States has dropped nearly two-thirds in the past decade.
A group of men who had crossed into Naco, Arizona from Naco, Sonora illegally are taken into custody by a United States Border Patrol agents. The men were searched and written up before being taken to a detention facility for processing.
Mikki K. Harris / Special A group of men who had crossed into Naco, Arizona from Naco, Sonora illegally are taken into custody by a United States Border Patrol agents. The men were searched and written up before being taken to a detention facility for processing.
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To that, many who work with Georgia’s immigrant population simply say: “We know.”
“It’s not surprising; it follows economic trends,” said Helen Kim Ho, executive director of the Asian American Legal Advocacy Center Inc. in Decatur. “Immigrants come here for a better life and that means a better job. Obviously when the job market starts to shrink, that impacts the flow of all immigration.”
According to the Pew study, an average of 850,000 people entered the U.S. illegally between 2000 and 2005. That figure dropped to 300,000 between 2007 and 2009, according to the report.
In Georgia, the population of illegal immigrants dropped from 475,000 in 2008 to 425,000 a year later; however that figure falls within the study’s margin of error, according to Pew senior demographer Jeffrey Passell. He continued that Georgia is among a group of Southeastern states that as a whole show a significant decline of 160,000 people in the illegal immigrant population from 2008 to 2009.
Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials in Atlanta, pointed to another major factor in the illegal immigration drop: tighter border control.
“Ultimately there has been a greater enforcement at the border during that time frame,” he said. “Fundamentally the border is much more secure today than it was ever in the past.”
Gonzalez and Ho called for comprehensive immigration reform in the light of the study.
“We still have millions of people in the country undocumented and we need to provide them a path to civilian status,” Gonzalez said.
The Pew study looked at both illegal immigrants entering the U.S., as well as people who did not leave after their legal visas expired, said D’Vera Cohn, senior writer at the Pew Research Center. The study did not estimate the number of undocumented workers who left the country in that time frame.
Immigration attorney Charles Kuck, former president of the National Association of Immigration Attorneys, said it’s rare to have a client who came to the U.S. in 2007 or 2008.
“It just doesn’t happen,” said Kuck, who recalled an increase in immigration figures in 2003 and 2004, a trend that dropped off a few years ago. “In the past two years, the number sunk like a stone. When there are no jobs, they don’t come.”
– Staff writer Jeremy Redmon contributed to this article.