Pew Hispanic Center - Portrait on Migrants

[Guest guest]

FYI - new report on migrants.

Press release is below.

Link to the report and press

release: http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=46

Press Release

For Immediate Release

6.14.2005

Contact:

Vidya Krishnamurthy,

202.419.4328

Pew Hispanic Center Offers Fuller Portrait of Unauthorized Migrants

Most Live in Families And An

Increasing Number

Have High

School Educations

Washington, DC - Contrary

to the stereotype of undocumented migrants as single males with very little

education who perform manual labor in agriculture or construction, a new Pew

Hispanic Center report shows that most of the unauthorized population lives in

families, a quarter has at least some college education and that illegal

workers can be found in many sectors of the US economy.

Building on previous work

that estimated the size and geographic dispersal of the undocumented

population, the new report offers a portrait of that population in

unprecedented detail by examining family composition, educational attainment,

income and employment.

" Unauthorized

Migrants: Numbers and Characteristics " was prepared by S. Passel,

a veteran demographer and senior research associate at the Center, using a

well-established methodology to analyze data from the March 2004 Current

Population Survey, which was conducted by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of

Labor Statistics.

The report estimates the

number of persons living in families in which the head of the household or the

spouse is an unauthorized migrant--13.9 million as of March 2004, including 4.7

million children. Of those individuals, some 3.2 million are US citizens by

birth but are living in " mixed status " families in which some members

are unauthorized, usually a parent, while others, usually children, are

Americans by birthright.

" The large number of

US citizen children born to parents with no legal status highlights one of the

thorniest dilemmas in developing policies to deal with the unauthorized

population, " said o Suro, director of the Pew

Hispanic Center,

a nonpartisan research center based in Washington

DC.

The report also offers

extensive data on the employment of unauthorized migrants, mapping their

presence in many sectors of the US

labor force. The report finds that at least 6.3 million unauthorized workers

were employed as of March 2004, comprising 4.3 percent of the civilian labor

force. Since 1986 it has been illegal for employers to hire workers lacking

proof of proper immigration status.

While 3 percent of

unauthorized workers are employed in agriculture, 33 percent have jobs in

service industries and substantial shares can be found in construction and

extractive occupations (16%) and in production, installation and repair (17%).

Overall, unauthorized

migrants are less educated than other sectors of the population with 49 percent

having not completed high school, compared with 9 percent of the native-born

and 25 percent of legal immigrants. Nonetheless, a quarter of the unauthorized

have at least some college education and another quarter have finished high

school.

" Not all of the

unauthorized population fits the stereotype of a poorly educated manual

laborer, " Passel said.

The new report was

developed as a briefing paper for the Independent Task Force on Immigration and

America's

Future, co-chaired by former Senator Spencer Abraham (R-MI) and former

Congressman Lee Hamilton (D-IN). The bipartisan task force has been convened by

the Migration Policy Institute in partnership with the Manhattan Institute and

the Woodrow International

Center for Scholars. The

report on the unauthorized population was presented to the task force by the Pew Hispanic

Center to provide a factual basis for

its discussions; the Pew

Hispanic Center,

which does not engage in issue advocacy, is not participating in the task

force's deliberations or its policy recommendations.

The report builds on a

previous report by Passel released in March that estimated the unauthorized

population at 10.3 million as of March 2004 and examined its dispersal to a

variety of new destinations. Given recent growth rates the number of

unauthorized migrants now approaches 11 million. The first section of the new

report reviews those estimates, and the report then goes on to present

additional material that examines the current characteristics of the

undocumented population for the first time.

Some of the report's

major findings include:

· Since the mid-1990s the number of unauthorized migrants arriving in

the United States

has exceeded the number of new legal immigrants. In recent years some 700,000

unauthorized migrants have arrived annually, compared with about 610,000 legal

immigrants.

· The education level of unauthorized migrants arriving in recent years

is higher than the levels of those who have been in the country for a decade or

more. The share who lack a high school degree is lower among those who have

been in the United States for 10 years or less than among those of longer

tenure (45% vs. 56%) and the share with some college education is higher (19%

vs. 10%).

· Labor force participation rates are higher among male unauthorized

migrants (92%) than in other sectors of the population (e.g. 83% of the

native-born). In contrast female unauthorized migrants are less likely to work,

with a labor force participation rate of 56% compared with 73% of the

native-born.

· Unauthorized workers make up a large share of the workforce in a

number of occupations that require neither government licensing nor education

credentials. For example, about a quarter of all drywall and ceiling tile

installers in the United States are unauthorized migrants, as are about a

quarter of all meat and poultry workers and a quarter of all dishwashers.

· Incomes for unauthorized migrants are low compared to legal immigrants

and the native-born, but they increase somewhat the longer an individual is in

the country. The average family income in 2003 for unauthorized migrants in the

country for less than ten years was $25,700, while those who had been in the country

for a decade or more earned $29,900. In contrast, average family incomes were

considerably higher for both legal immigrants ($47,800) and the native-born

($47,700).

###

The Pew Hispanic

Center is a nonpartisan

research organization supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Its mission is to

improve understanding of the U.S. Hispanic population and to chronicle Latinos'

growing impact on the entire nation. The Center does not advocate for or take

positions on policy issues. It is a project of the Pew

Research Center,

a nonpartisan " fact tank " in Washington,

DC that provides information on the issues,

attitudes and trends shaping America

and the world.