Illegal Immigrant Total Is Raised

By D'Vera Cohn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 25, 2001; Page A24

The number of illegal immigrants in the United States is at least 7 million and possibly as high as 8 million, according to new figures from the 2000 Census that offer a significantly larger count than previous estimates.

The new total shows that the number of undocumented immigrants has at least doubled since 1990, as millions of people arrived -- mainly from Mexico and Central America -- to fill jobs in the booming economy of the past decade. The previous estimate from census officials for the undocumented population was 6 million.

The new figure is another indication of the enormous demographic changes the country has seen in the past decade, fueled in large part by a record number of new immigrants. The precise number of undocumented arrivals has long been difficult to pin down and highly controversial.

The new information is likely to reinforce sentiment to seal the nation's borders more tightly against illegal immigrants or to take steps to prevent people who entered legally from overstaying their visas.

Before the Sept. 11 attacks, support had been building for an amnesty program for undocumented workers, but that is now seen as unlikely. Not only is there less political support for regularizing undocumented workers, there is also less employer demand because the nation's economy is deteriorating.

Census Bureau officials computed the new total in part to help determine why the nation's population as measured by the 2000 Census -- 281 million -- was 6 million larger than they had estimated it would be. To answer that question, they took an early look at data on the nation's foreign-born residents, which had not been scheduled for release until next year.

That data showed that 31 million U.S. residents were born abroad, and officials concluded that at least 7 million of them were undocumented. Overall, the foreign-born population grew by more than 11 million in the past decade. Undocumented immigrants accounted for about a third of that, according to the new data.

The figure of 7 million undocumented immigrants was contained in a recent Census Bureau study, but the study said the number could be low by as much as a million because immigrants are often missed in the door-to-door national head count.

The study's coauthor, Kevin Deardorff, said in an interview this week that, based on information he received after the report was written, he believes it is "a number closer to 7 million."

But another expert on immigration, Jeffrey S. Passel, an Urban Institute researcher who advised the Census Bureau as it compiled the new numbers, argued that even a figure of 8 million could be low.

"They now are in the ballpark," he said.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service bumped up its own estimate earlier this year to a potential total of 7.5 million.

Steven Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors limits on immigration, said the new census numbers marked "the first time anyone in the government has said it is that big." Given that the 1990 estimate of illegal immigrants was 3.5 million, Camarota said, "this number shows an inability to control the border."

Cecilia Muņoz, vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza, argued that the numbers showed the need to revive amnesty discussions, in part to get a handle on who is in the country illegally. "We are much more likely to advance the cause of security in this country if we have a better sense of who is coming into the United States," she said.

The recent economic slide has particularly hurt undocumented workers, who often are employed in the service jobs most likely to vanish in bad times. But Deborah Waller Meyers, a policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, said that she would be "surprised if large numbers of undocumented people left the United States" now. Border security is tighter than it was a few years ago, she said, and many illegal immigrants realize that they may not be able to get back in.