Illegal Immigration to U.S. Slows Sharply

From The Wall Street Journal:

Illegal immigration to the U.S. has slowed sharply since 2007, with the bleak U.S. job market apparently discouraging people from heading north.

The influx of illegal immigrants plunged to an estimated 300,000 annually between March 2007 and 2009, from 850,000 a year between March 2000 and March 2005, according to new study released Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group.

The decline contributed to a contraction in the overall size of the undocumented population to 11 million people in March 2009 from a peak of 12 million two years earlier, according to the Pew analysis, which is based on data from the Census Bureau.

All told, illegal immigrants in 2009 represented 28% of the foreign-born population in the U.S. Nearly half of them arrived since 2000, according to Pew.

The Pew study found that the flow of Mexicans, who represent 60% of all illegal immigrants in the U.S., plummeted to 150,000 annually during the 2007-2009 period, compared with the annual average of 500,000 during the first half of the decade.

President Barack Obama has asked Congress to send him legislation to create a pathway to citizenship for many illegal immigrants, as well as to further secure borders. Congressional Democrats had talked about moving forward earlier this year, but there has been no movement and the matter is widely considered dead for now.