Academic experts including myself and think-tank demographers like Jeffrey Passell at the Pew Hispanic Center agree that there has been a slowdown in undocumented migration since 2007; the real question is what is causing it. The CIS report declares victory for the “enforcement-only” approach, but it offers no direct evidence that fewer undocumented migrants are attempting to come to the U.S., nor that fewer of them are getting in, nor that more of those already here are leaving the U.S., as a result of enforcement efforts. In another romp through census (Current Population Survey) data that contains no information on the legal status of interviewees, CIS uses “young, less-educated, Hispanic” as a proxy for being illegal – at least three-quarters of them (another arbitrary guess-timate). This is such a grossly imprecise metric that it renders the rest of the analysis essentially useless, especially the alleged discrepancy between growth rates of the illegal vs. legal immigrant population, which the report claims is a key indicator that enforcement is working.”
Posted on:
August 1st, 2008
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