You know the recession is here after you read this

Is U.S. losing its appeal for illegal immigrants?

REPORT CLAIMS POPULATION HAS DROPPED IN PAST YEAR
By Mike Swift
Mercury News

With a stagnating economy and hundreds of miles of new fences along the Mexican border, the United States - and California - may have become a less inviting destination for illegal immigrants from Latin America.

Two key signals - an unprecedented slowdown in money sent by immigrants back to Mexico, and a new report that claims the nation's illegal immigrant population has dropped significantly since last summer - indicate a possible change.

Still, the evidence is not strong in the Bay Area, where the economy is more robust than in the rest of the state, and where local immigrant groups said they see little or no local evidence of an exodus of undocumented residents.

In a study released Wednesday in Washington, D.C., the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors tighter curbs on immigration, said a weaker economy and aggressive immigration enforcement have prompted many immigrants to return home to Mexico and other countries.

"Illegals are responding to changing conditions in the United States and are going home in significant numbers," said Steven Camarota, director of research for the center and co-author of the report, which was based on U.S. Census Bureau data.

Meanwhile, Mexico's Central Bank reported Wednesday that the amount of money sent home by Mexican immigrants dropped by 2.2 percent in the first half of 2008 compared with the first six months of 2007, the first such decline in a decade.

Hans Johnson, a demographer with the Public Policy Institute of California, said that evidence isn't proof illegal immigrants are leaving the state, but his research has shown that illegal immigration to California is strongly tied to the economy.

"The big picture here is we've had a tremendous increase in the number of illegal immigrants in the United States, and also in California, over the last 15 years or so," Johnson said. "So it is in fact possible, maybe even plausible, that the numbers have declined."

The last official government estimate of the undocumented population was for January 2006, when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said 11.5 million illegal immigrants were in the United States - a 37 percent increase since 2000. With 2.8 million undocumented residents, California had the largest such population of any state, but California's illegal immigrant population grew by 13 percent from 2000 to 2006.

The Center for Immigration Studies report said the number of illegal immigrants in the United States peaked at 12.5 million people in August 2007, and had declined by 11 percent, or about 1.3 million people, since then. California's percentage drop was about the same as the nation's, Camarota said in an interview.

More than two-thirds of the nation's illegal immigrant population is from Mexico and other Latin American countries, according to the Homeland Security study. Because the Census Bureau does not ask about a person's immigration status, Camarota used the population of young Latinos with low levels of education to estimate the nation's illegal immigrant population.

Camarota acknowledged his method, which differs from the method used by the Homeland Security Department and other experts to estimate the illegal population, is imperfect.

"It is an estimate, and any attempt to look at the illegal immigrant population will always be just that," he said. "There is no way to measure illegal immigration but . . . to estimate it."

Nevertheless, South Bay immigrant services groups say they see no evidence of a significant departure of illegal immigrants. Nor did several Western Union outlets in San Jose, contacted Wednesday, say that fewer Mexicans were sending money home.

"They are sending more money," said Don Martin, of the Money Market on The Alameda in San Jose. "You always have good customers from Mexico."

Advocates who work with immigrants said one possible explanation is that increased enforcement is driving illegal immigrants underground, who therefore fail to show up on government surveys such as the Census Bureau's.

The suggestion that there are fewer undocumented migrants in the South Bay "doesn't ring true to me," said Olivia Soza-Mendiola, chief executive of the Mexican American Community Services Agency in San Jose.

"When you look at what's going on with immigration and the war against the undocumented, I think what we're finding is there are more people that are more obscure," she said. "They are starting to hide again like they did in the past, and they are going to be harder to account for."

Gregory Kepferle, CEO of Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County, said the agency is seeing "more clients, not fewer" for pro bono legal services.

"I'm a bit skeptical about the actual percentage decline. It could be, but we're not seeing it," Kepferle said. "With greater enforcement, what we're hearing is that people are just keeping their heads down."