Facts and Statistics

According to the Department of Homeland Security and the 2005 American Community Survey and Census Data:

• There are 288,378,137 people living in the United States
• About 35.7 million of them are immigrants (12.4% of the population)
• About 10.3 million lack legal status
• 40% of those lacking legal status overstayed temporary visas rather than entering without a visa
• 14,967,828 are citizens (41.9% of immigrant population)
• 47% are Latino
• 52.1% have limited English Proficiency
• 7,800,043 have a college degree
• 6,021,361 live in poverty (16.9% of immigrant population)

In Colorado:

• There are 4,562,244 people living in Colorado
• 460,294 are immigrants (10.1% of the population)
• 141,684 are citizens (30.8% of immigrant population)
• 57.9% are Latino
• 55.2% have limited English Proficiency
• 85,107 have a college degree
• 84,779 live in poverty (18.4% of immigrant population)

In Fiscal Year 2005:

• 1,122,373 people obtained legal permanent residence status in the U.S.
• 302,817 came from Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean
• 11,977 people in Colorado obtained legal permanent residence status
• 1,573,631 people were admitted as temporary workers
• 602,972 naturalizations were filed, and 108,247 were denied
• As of June 2006, the U.S. Immigration Services had a case backlog of 1,164,000

   
U.S. Citizenship – Anyone born in the U.S., its territories and certain possessions (Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands, for instance) are citizens.  These include people born of undocumented parents.  Everyone else must “naturalize” to become a citizen, usually after a required period of lawful permanent residence.

Lawful Permanent Residence – Lawful permanent residents are non-citizens that have the authorization to live and work in the U.S. indefinitely and have the most stable immigration status.

• They may serve in the U.S. military. They cannot vote.
• DHS may still remove them for certain reasons.
• After five years (3 years if married to a US citizen), lawful permanent residents may become citizens by taking a test and fulfilling other requirements.
• Lawful permanent residents should have Permanent Residence Cards (“green cards”)
• Lawful permanent residents may file petitions for lawful permanent residence for their spouses and unmarried children.

Noncitizen – Any person in the U.S. who is not a U.S. citizen, whether the person has legal immigration documents or not.

History

1883 Mexican land law – private companies could speculate land for subdivision, uprooting rural families and starting urban migration, leading to the 1910 Mexican revolution.  Many people came to U.S. in search of work and to flee the war.

1895 – Mexican International Railroad extended in to Texas, providing railway jobs in the U.S. and facilitating migration.

1908 – Gentlemen’s Agreement and 1924 Immigration Act – Mexican agricultural labor was sought as Asian labor was excluded.

1924 – The Border Patrol was created, and the concept of “illegal alien” for undocumented workers was created.

Great Depression – labor was no longer needed, and Mexicans were blamed for Anglo unemployment. “Repatriation” sent many people to Mexico on the railway, of which the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce estimated 60% were American citizens (Ronald Takaki. 1993. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Back Bay Books, 334).

World War II – 1942-1964: the Bracero program imported more than 4 million Mexicans as contract laborers, while around 500,000 Mexican-Americans served in the armed forces (Takaki 393).

1964 – An excess of workers, the invention of the mechanical cotton harvester, and the humanitarian violations of the bracero employers ended the Bracero program.

1986 – Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). It susbstantially increased funding to the Border Patrol.

1993 – Operation Blockade in El Paso was launched and followed in 1994 with Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego.

The 1986, 1993 and 1994 events are notable in the history of U.S. border enforcement. "In In both operations, the Border Patrol deployed huge amounts of equipment and personel to shut down these two sectors to undocumented migration... Prior to the borded buildup, the vast majority of undocumented migrants crossed in just two sectors and proceeded to destinations in just three states: California, Texas and Illinois.. The placement of a veritable wall of enforcement in these two sectors simply diverted undocumented migrants to other locations along the border, dramatically increasing the traffic thorough New Mexico and Arizona... A consequence of redirecting the flows away from urban areas was that it sharply increased the cost and risk of border crossing... Accroding to the Mexican Migration Project (MMP), a joint U.S.- Mexico research effort, the rate of death during undocumented border crossing tripled. At the same time, the cost of hiring  a guide to achieve a successful border crossing quadrupled... The increases in cost and risk of border crossing had strong deterrent effect on migrants who sought to minimize border crossing. Beginning with the emplementation of the IRCA after 1986 there was a steady decline in the likelihood of returning to Mexico. The net effect of the billions spent on border enforcement was not to stop undocumented migration, but to deflect migratory flows away from California, Texas and Illinois and redirect them to 47 other states while lowering quite dramatically the rate of return migration. Despite all the public rhetotic about immigrant invasions and floods, the rate of illegal migration into the U.S. has not changed in 20 years. The only thing that has changed has been the rate of out-migration".(Douglas S. Massey, International Migration in a Globalizing Economy, Great Decisions 2007)

Economic analysis shows that migration benefits the immigrants, their countries of origin, and the members of their receiving communities:
“A principal conclusion from this exercise is that migration can generate significant economic gains for migrants, origin countries, and destination countries – but migration also can have important political and social consequences.  For example, natives in destination countries may become concerned about maintaining cultural identity in the middle of a growing diversity, which also has implications relative to minority languages and other issues surrounding the integration of migrants.  To some extent, opposition to migration is driven by these concerns, and not by an economic calculation of the gains and losses” (World Bank. 2005. Global Economic Prospects: Economic Implications of Remittances and Migration. Washington, DC: World Bank, 26)