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UA POL 596A - Estimates of the Size and Characteristics of the Undocumented Population

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March 21, 2005 By Jeffrey S. Passel Senior Research Associate Pew Hispanic Center Pew Hispanic Center A Pew Research Center Project www.pewhispanic.org 1615 L Street, NW, Suite 700 • Washington, DC 20036-5610 • Phone: 202-419-3600 • Fax: 202-419-3608 REPORT Estimates of the Size and Characteristics of the Undocumented Population- 1 - EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Pew Hispanic Center has developed new estimates for the size and key characteristics of the population of foreign-born persons living in the United States without proper authorization using data from the March 2004 Current Population Survey which is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Labor. ∗ Major findings include: • Following several years of steady growth, the number of undocumented residents reached an estimated 10.3 million in March 2004 with undocumented Mexicans numbering 5.9 million or 57 percent of the total. • As of March 2005, the undocumented population has reached nearly 11 million including more than 6 million Mexicans, assuming the same rate of growth as in recent years. • About 80 to 85 percent of the migration from Mexico in recent years has been undocumented. • Since the mid-1990s, the most rapid growth in the number of undocumented migrants has been in states that previously had relatively small foreign-born populations. As a result, Arizona and North Carolina are now among the states with largest numbers of undocumented migrants. • Although most undocumented migrants are young adults, there is also a sizeable childhood population. About one-sixth of the population—some 1.7 million people— is under 18 years of age. SIZE AND ORIGINS OF THE UNDOCUMENTED POPULATION Neither the Census Bureau nor any other U.S. government agency counts the unauthorized migrant population or defines their demographic characteristics based on specific enumeration. There is, however, a widely-accepted methodology for estimating the size and certain characteristics, such as age and national origins, of the undocumented population based on official data. This methodology essentially subtracts the estimated legal-immigrant population from the total foreign-born population and treats the residual as a source of data on the unauthorized migrant population (Passel, Van Hook, and Bean 2004). The estimates reported here use this methodology with data from the March 2004 Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS, a monthly survey of about 50,000 households conducted jointly by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau, is best known as the source for monthly unemployment statistics. Every March both the sample size and the questionnaire of the CPS are augmented to produce the Annual Social and Economic Supplement which provides additional data on several additional subjects including the foreign-born population. As of March 2004, there were an estimated 10.3 million unauthorized migrants living in the United States. A comparison to past estimates derived with the same methodology shows ∗ See “Note on Methods and Terminology” below for definitions, data sources, and methods.- 2 - that the undocumented population has grown rapidly in recent years. There were 8.4 million unauthorized migrants living in the United States in April 2000 according to estimates derived from Census 2000 (Passel, Van Hook, and Bean 2004). Thus, average annual growth over the 4-year period since 2000 was about 485,000 per year. Assuming this rate of growth held steady, the best estimate for March 2005 points to a figure of somewhat less than 11 million for the number of undocumented residents. The 10.3 million undocumented migrants in March 2004 represent about 29 percent of the almost 36 million foreign-born residents of the United States (Figure 1). Mexicans make up by far the largest group of undocumented migrants at 5.9 million or 57 percent of the total in the March 2004 estimates. This share has remained virtually unchanged for the past decade, even as the size of the undocumented population has grown very rapidly. In addition, another 2.5 million undocumented migrants or about 24 percent of the total are from other Latin American countries. About 9 percent are from Asia, 6 percent from Europe and Canada, and 4 percent from the rest of the world (Figure 2). While the annual net growth of the unauthorized population has averaged roughly half a million per year since 1990, the number of new undocumented migrants reaching the country every year is significantly larger. While it grows through the arrival of new migrants, the undocumented population is reduced each year because many undocumented migrants depart, a few die, and significant numbers acquire legal status. Over the past decade the number of newly arrived unauthorized migrants added to the U.S. population has averaged 700,000–800,000 a year (Figure 3). Over the same interval, legal migrants arrived at roughly the same rate. Overall, the Mexican-born population living in the United States, including both those with legal status and otherwise, has continued to increase dramatically. About 11.2 million Mexicans were in the United States as of March 2004 with just under half (47 percent) or about 5.2 million having legal immigration status. Mexicans overall represent about 32 percent of the foreign-born population, a high figure by historical standards but not unprecedented; both Irish and German immigrants accounted for a higher percentage of the foreign-born at various points in the mid- and late-19th century (Gibson and Lennon 1999). The number of Mexican migrants in the United States has grown quite rapidly over the past 35 years, increasing almost 15-fold from about 760,000 in the 1970 Census to more than 11 million in 2004—an average annual growth rate of more than 8 percent, maintained over more than 3 decades. This remarkable growth has been largely driven by undocumented migration. On average the Mexican population living in the United States has grown by about half a million people a year over the past decade. Unauthorized migrants have accounted for about 80–85 percent of the increase (Figure 4). Since this growth has been fairly consistent, we estimate that the number of undocumented Mexicans in the United States reached 6 million before the end of 2004 and could surpass 6.5 million by the end of 2005. DESTINATIONS


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