On February 9 the Department of Homeland Security released an estimate which showed that the illegal immigrant population declined by about 1 million in the two years from January 2007 to January 2009. However, there is no direct government or other reliable survey of the number of illegal immigrants living in the United States, and any conclusion that DHS draws from other data is subject to misinterpretation.
It is no doubt true that the current rate of illegal immigration inflow is lower than it has been (but not negative!) because jobs are scarcer due to our severe economic downturn. However there is no logical reason to expect that the reduced availability of jobs will cause many illegal immigrants to give up all the advantages of living in the U.S. and return to their native countries where the job prospects are even worse than in the U.S., where corruption and crime are rampant, where public services are poor or are absent, where public welfare is very limited or unavailable, and where public education and the life prospects for their children are dismal.
If anything, the reduced availability of jobs is pressuring some illegal immigrants to move to those sections of our country where there are fewer competing illegal immigrants in order to obtain low-end jobs. For those immigrants who are temporarily out of work, there is also the possibility of doubling up in living space with their many friends and relatives also living here. In either case, more immigrants would be on the move but they would not be moving out of the country!
To quote from a March, 2009 publication of The Inter-American Development Bank entitled "Remittances in times of financial instability": "Evidence from focus groups and surveys commissioned by the MIF [multilateral Investment Fund] and the Inter-American Dialogue suggest that immigrants are extremely capable of coping with adversity. These coping strategies include reducing the amount of money they spend on themselves, working longer hours or multiple jobs in the face of decreasing wages, shifting sectors because of declines in sectors such as manufacturing and construction, moving to areas with higher labor demand.... migrants, especially the undocumented, move from one state to another in response to local enforcement measures. Despite the cumulative effects of the economic, housing, and credit crises, it is only as a last resort that immigrants will return to their home countries. They will first exhaust all other options." [blogger's emphasis added]
It should also be noted that there are some strong motivations for the Obama administration to underestimate the extent of the illegal immigration problem. Understating the extent of illegal immigration helps to convey the impression that the Administration is enforcing our immigrations laws when in fact the opposite is true (see November 21 blog entitled “Obama’s Immigration Law Enforcement Farce”). It also makes it seem that illegal immigrants will deprive fewer less educated Americans of low-end jobs if there are fewer illegal immigrants in the country. The administration would also like to further these deceptions in an effort to get Congress and the public go along with its major objective of getting Congress to approve an amnesty for nearly all of today’s illegal immigrants. As noted in the October 2 blog entitled “The Elephants in the Democrats’ Back Room” there are a number of unstated political reasons for the Democrats to favor amnesty and non enforcement of our immigration laws.