The number of new illegal immigrants to the United States surpassed the number of authorized immigrants from 1999 through at least last year, according to a study based on government statistics that was released today by the Pew Hispanic Center. The study said that immigration to the United States-- legal and illegal, from all regions of the world-- rose during the 1990s, peaked in 2000 and declined substantially since 2001 as the national economy slowed. The number of new arrivals rose in 2004, as economic conditions improved, the study said.
Although, the arrival of both authorized and unauthorized immigrants declined with the economic downturn, the number of legal immigrants declined more sharply, the study said. Fewer legal immigrants arrived in 2003 and 2004 than in the mid-1990s, the study said, while the number of new illegal immigrants has settled back to about the same level as in the mid-1990s.
More than 34 million immigrants now live in the United States, and make up 12 percent of the nation's population, according to a Census Bureau estimate last year. The number has more than tripled since 1970, when the foreign-born population numbered 9.6 million. In the Washington area, one in six residents was born in another country.
The Pew Center report, which tracked immigration year by year using Census Bureau surveys, said that the number of new immigrants grew very gradually in the early and mid-1990s, from slightly more than a million a year in 1992 to 1.2 million in 1997. But as the economy expanded in the late 1990s, the number of new immigrants increased dramatically, to 1.5 million in 1999 and 2000.
Since then, as the economy deflated, the number of new immigrants fell back to about 1.1 million in 2003, about the same level as in the mid-1990s. But the report said it appears that immigration rose again since then, especially from Mexico and Latin America.
The destinations of new immigrants have broadened, the report noted. A smaller share now heads for the traditional gateways of New York and California, the study said, while more now go to "new settlement states" such as Georgia, North Carolina, Iowa, Utah and Delaware.
Although the report did not break out totals for the Washington area, the report's co-author, Jeffrey S. Passel, said he does not think new immigration to this area declined as much as it did in other parts of the country since the peak in 2000. This region also is attracting a growing number of immigrants who came first to other areas, then moved here to take jobs or join family members.