Illegal immigrants in US at lowest level since 2004: Study

Migrants, part of a caravan of thousands traveling from Central America en route to the United States, hold flags of Honduras an

Reuters: The population of unauthorised immigrants in the United States fell to 10.7 million in 2016, its lowest level since 2004, due largely to a decline in the number of people coming from Mexico, a study released on Tuesday said.

The report from the Pew Research Center, based on US Census data and other figures from 2016, showed the number of illegal immigrants in the United States has declined steadily since its peak of 12.2 million in 2007.Researchers believe part of the reason for the decline was the economic recession that gripped the United States in 2007 and the slow recovery that followed, which limited work opportunities for migrants.

“The combination of economic forces and enforcement priorities may be working together to discourage people from arriving, or sending them home,” said D’Vera Cohn, one of the authors of the Pew Research Center report.

President Donald Trump has made immigration enforcement a focus for his administration, most recently pressing the US Congress to authorise funding of a wall on the border with Mexico and deploying troops in advance of the arrival of a caravan of migrants from Central America.

Even before Trump took office, a decline in the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico had changed the demographic profile of unauthorised migrants in the United States.

Mexico is still the country of origin for about half the unauthorised immigrants in the United States, but their number in that total population fell by 1.5 million between 2007 and 2016, the Pew report found.

During that decade, the number of unauthorised immigrants from Central America increased by 375,000.