So it's reached equilibrium at about four people out of a hundred being unauthorized immigrants? I could live with that.
Steady? No, if you look at the plot, it's climbing. How fast, on average, we won't know until a few years from now ... assuming policy remains the same.
Second, that 4% isn't throughout the US. The Peu study found that the percentage of illegals is 7.2% in Nevada, 6.8% in California, 6.7% in Texas and 6.2% in New Jersey. Can you live with that?
Third, I'm not sure the 11 million is accurate. For one thing, it doesn't include the children of illegals ... because they are "citizens". The Peu analysis said that 8% of all births have at least one illegal immigrant parent. So obviously, the illegals are outbreeding us as well. And they are mostly impoverished children, which makes them a burden on the country as well.
Finally, the Pew analysis is based on the Census Bureau's Survey. But the Census Bureau does not ask people about their immigration status, so the *estimated* number of illegal immigrants is derived largely by subtracting the *estimated* legal immigrant population from the *estimated* foreign-born population. Seriously, do you think that a house full of illegal immigrants would provide Census workers with an accurate count of the number of people inside the house? Or that they were even found by census workers in the first place? California is now claiming an undercount of as many as 1.5 million alone. So clearly the 11 million figure is probably a lower bound on the real number.
Here's a website that notes a variety of studies and groups that suggest the real best estimate number is around 20 million illegals, with an upper bound on estimates near 40 million:
http://www.npg.org/CAPS.html
In October 2007 at a Washington press conference, however, Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS - a nonprofit public interest organization) released reports from four of its experts variously estimating that 18 million to 38 million illegal aliens may now be in the US, with the permanent stock of illegals estimated as increasing yearly at between 1.3 million and 4.0 million.
Here's more on that CAPS report:
http://www.capsweb.org/content.php?id=57 .
And there are other sources suggesting a number near 20 million is more accurate.
For example, Bear Sterns:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigrant_population_of_the_United_States
Bear Stearns' investigators came up with another way to attack this very difficult problem. They made the assumption that the amount of remittances (money sent back to Mexico) is directly proportional to the number of Mexican immigrants in the United States. Other data used for their estimates are the increases of households and school enrollment in Mexican immigrant communities. They conclude that the number of illegal aliens in the United States may well be twice the official number put out by the U.S. Census of 9 million and may be 20 million people or higher.
And here's another analysis:
http://www.desertinvasion.us/data/invasion_numbers.html
All coming up with numbers around 20 million or higher. And if the real number is indeed closer to 20 million than 11 million, then we are talking an average of over 6% of the population nationwide being illegal, and over 10% in states like California. Can you live with THAT, marplots?
