Undocumented Immigrants Remain At Under 12 Million, Have More Children, New Study Says
By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor
Undocumented immigrants in the United States are more geographically dispersed than in the past, they make up over 5% of the nation’s labor force and are more likely than U.S.-born residents or legal immigrants to live in a household with children, a new report says.
The study, published on Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center, also says that “the recent rapid growth in the undocumented immigrant labor force has come to a halt.” The undocumented population has stayed at about 11.9 million or 4% of the country’s population.
The Center, which has been studying the size and growth of the undocumented population for years, estimates that it grew rapidly between 1990 and 2006, but it has since stabilized.
Now, “unauthorized immigrants are 4% of the nation’s population and account for 5.4% of its workforce,” the report’s authors, Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn wrote.