A new report released yesterday reveals that illegal immigration to the United States is rising.
Source: distintaslatitudes.net
According to a poll by the Pew Research Centre’s Hispanic Trends Project, the number of illegal immigrants living in the US rose from 11.3 million in 2009 to 11.7 million last year. Illegal immigration to the States had been on decline, but an upturn in the country’s economic fortunes has been pinpointed as the main reason behind the recent rise.
“As a whole, with the recession ending, the decrease in illegal immigration has stopped,” Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at Pew, told The Associated Press.
The number of undocumented immigrants living in the States had risen to as high as 12.2 million in 2007, before falling to its recent record low two years later.
Immigrants from Mexico now make up 52 per cent of America’s illegal population – down 5 per cent from the proportion recorded in 2007. Preliminary figures show that illegal immigration from countries other than Mexico rose to a record 5.65 million in 2012.
Under recent immigration reform proposals passed by the Senate earlier this year, all illegal immigrants living in America will be offered an eventual path to citizenship. However, this reform has stalled in the House of Representatives, with the Republican-controlled House unwilling to meet this particular requirement of the bill.