Has the Illegal-Immigrant Population Dropped?
Maybe. But the exact number doesn’t matter so much as the policies that buoy lawbreaking.
The swarm of northbound migrants in Mexico has many people wondering just how many illegal immigrants reside stateside. Good luck finding out for sure. A September study by Yale and MIT calculated that some 22 million illegal immigrants are in the U.S., or double the conventional figure. Yet the Pew Research Center continues to conclude that not only is that number inflated, but the illegal-immigrant population is actually dwindling.
The Washington Examiner reports, “Based on government data, the [Pew] study estimates that there were 10.7 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. in 2016, down from a high point of 12.2 million in 2007 and the lowest since 2004. This decline is mostly due to a decrease in the number of Mexicans illegally entering the U.S. and the fact that most regions have either remained steady in immigration numbers in the past decade or declined.”
There are three points worth reiterating. First, we tend to agree with the larger population number for several reasons, two of which are the anonymous nature of illegal immigration along with woefully insufficient data. In other words, we can’t know for sure what the exact population number is. However, even if it’s diminishing, it probably remains far higher than what Pew surmises.
Second, the pipeline remains flush. Even if we assume the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. has fallen, that’s more than likely temporary. As the Examiner explains, “Pew … notes that there is a growing number of illegal entries from Central America’s ‘Northern Triangle’ countries, which include El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Central America was the only region from the study that saw an increase in illegal immigration to the U.S., rising from about 1,500 in 2007 to 1,850 in 2016.” True to form, the current caravans in Mexico originate from some or all of these countries.
Finally, whether the illegal-immigrant population is 10 million or 22 million, it’s millions too many. As long as the border remains insufficiently secured and the border wall continues to be elusive, these numbers will oscillate depending on the political and economic atmosphere. It’s important that we try to derive the best population guesstimate possible, but it’s even more important to reverse the policies that buoy lawbreaking.
