The estimated illegal
immigrant
population in the United States has remained virtually unchanged over nearly two decades despite myriad events that have affected immigration and emigration.
The latest available data show approximately
11 million
people resided in the country in 2018 as a result of either coming over the
border
without permission or entering lawfully but failing to depart on time.
The number has been cited by presidents through the past four administrations, by researchers, and by advocacy groups, yet despite the passage of time, it seems to never change.
In 2006, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center in Washington
found
between 11.5 million and 12 million people were illegal immigrants. Two years later, Pew
determined
that number was around 11.8 million people.
ARRESTS OF CHINESE IMMIGRANTS ILLEGALLY CROSSING U.S.-MEXICO BORDER JUMPS 1,230% IN JANUARY
Former President Barack Obama
stated
in 2010 that “11 million undocumented immigrants” were in the U.S.
In 2016, former President Donald Trump
talked
about the “11 million illegal immigrants” during a campaign speech in Arizona.
Last November, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
called
for “a path to citizenship for all 11 million, or however many undocumented, there are here.”
However, the 11 million immigrants here in 2003 are not necessarily the same in the country today.
“You see people saying all the time that estimates of the population have been stuck at 11 million for so many years,” said Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications and public affairs at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, during a phone call Tuesday. “The thing people are not factoring into the equation is that this is not a static population. … People return to countries of origin. People die. People move to other countries. People in some cases are able to legalize their status.”
The illegal immigrant population rose steadily for decades. Around the turn of the century, 8.5 million people were residing in the U.S., according to
data
from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics.
The population continued to increase in the early 2000s and topped 10.5 million by 2005, even as the George W. Bush administration moved to wall off parts of the southern border, where predominantly Mexican men came across illegally in search of blue-collar jobs.
Mexican citizens have long made up the greatest portion of this population, but many returned to Mexico by 2009 as the Great Recession hit all corners of the American economy, Mittelstadt said.
In addition, between 2009 and 2017, the Obama administration
deported
3 million illegal immigrants from within the U.S., according to the libertarian Cato Institute think tank in Washington, serving as a deterrent to those outside the U.S.
Using federal data, MPI and the Center for Migration Studies organization estimated that the undocumented population stayed between 10 million and 12 million between 2008 and 2018. DHS estimates only went through 2015 but also stayed in that range.
The undocumented population has long been dominated by immigrants who overstayed visas, according to a 2022
report
by the Council on Foreign Relations that cited research from the Center for Migration Studies.
“Though many of the policies that aim to reduce unlawful immigration focus on enforcement at the border, individuals who arrive in the United States legally and overstay their visas comprise a significant portion of the undocumented population,” the CFR report stated. “Between 2010 and 2018, individuals who overstayed their visas far outnumbered those who arrived by crossing the border illegally.”
Mittelstadt said the coronavirus pandemic interrupted the decennial national census in 2020 and rendered many of its results unusable. (The census was also mired in legal drama over the Trump administration wanting to ask a citizenship question that was ultimately blocked by the Supreme Court in 2019.)
The circumstances surrounding the 2020 count mean groups like MPI must wait for data from the 2021 survey, which is in the process of being reviewed by its analysts.
“While there have been substantial numbers of border arrivals in the last few years, we don’t know how much of that in-migration is offset by emigration, in particular of the large Mexican unauthorized population that has been shrinking since the 2008 recession,” Mittelstadt said.
The influx of immigrants at the southern border over the past two years has resulted in 2 million people being released into the U.S. to await immigration court hearings years down the road.
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A spokeswoman for NumbersUSA, a conservative-leaning immigration think tank in Washington, said it was “fair to say” that the illegal immigrant population “has probably gone up” as a result of the mass releases.
“Unless 2 million people have left or you’ve had deaths or that number has been made up for with adjustments in [immigration] status then you would think our illegal alien population is at least 13 million now,” said Chris Chmielenski, NumbersUSA vice president and deputy director.
Chmielenski added that the 11 million figure from 2018 was valid and not the 20 million or 30 million figures that others, including Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
have purported
.
“I tend to believe the number,” he said.
