Immigration is back on the policy agenda.  Early in April, the White House again signaled the President's intention to re-start the immigration debate.  Conceding that the issue is politically controversial, Obama is nevertheless quoted as saying ‘those who are long time residents but lack legal status "have to have some mechanism over time to get out of the shadows."' (New York Times, 4/9/09)

The Pew Hispanic Center's recent study, A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States, by Jeffrey S. Passel and D'Vera Cohn, provides a starting point for the debate.  Based on data primarily from the Census Bureau's March 2008 Current Population Surveys, the study estimates that unauthorized immigrants are 4% of the country's population and make up 5.4% of the workforce. Growth in the number of illegal workers, which accelerated in 2003, has slowed, however, with 2008 estimates not significantly different from those in 2007.

Contrary to past patterns, illegal immigrants are now widely dispersed across the nation.  States in the southeast, in particular, including Georgia and North Carolina, have seen a rapid increase in the number of undocumented workers in their labor force, while California, which still has the largest number of undocumented workers (2.7 million), saw its share of the illegal worker population fall from 42% in 1990 to 22% in 2008. 

Nearly half of these immigrant households are families with children. (By contrast, only about a fifth of U.S. born households and slightly more than a third of legal immigrant households are couples with children.)  The children of unauthorized immigrants whether lacking legal status themselves or U.S. citizens are 6.8% of enrollment in elementary and secondary schools in the U.S.  

Hispanics continue to account for about three quarters (76%) of illegal immigrants. More than half of these are from Mexico.  Asians are 11% of unauthorized immigrants: a mere 2% are from the Middle East.