Undocumented Immigrant Population Dropped Dramatically in Oregon
Friday, November 21, 2014
The Nov. 20 executive action won’t apply to everyone, the president said. Only undocumented immigrants who meet specific criteria will be eligible to obtain a green card, social security number and a guarantee they won’t be deported for up to three years. Although it’s not a path to citizenship, the change is providing peace-of-mind for a portion of the estimated 120,000 undocumented immigrants residing in Oregon.
Oregon is among six states in the Western U.S. that experienced a significant reduction in its immigrant population, according to a Nov. 18 report released by the Pew Research Center.
The population of “unauthorized immigrants” in Oregon was 20,000 less in 2012 than it was in 2009. Nationally, the population remained stagnant at approximately 11.2 million people, according to Pew.
Mary King, a retired Portland State economics professor who extensively researched Mexican migration to the U.S. during her career, said, “Immigration from Mexico really came to a standstill, given unemployment in the U.S., and especially the huge impact of the Great Recession on construction work in particular. It’s become so much harder to cross the border that it didn’t make sense for many people to try, given what they were hearing about the U.S. labor market.”
Oregon earned a reputation in 2008 among undocumented immigrants as being an unwelcoming state after the State Legislature passed Senate Bill 1080, a law that prohibited anyone from obtaining an identification card if they couldn’t prove they were in the country legally.
Some immigrants returned home to Mexico during the economic downturn, although many planned planned to return, King said.
Mexican immigrants accounted for 26 percent of country’s 42.5 million foreign-born residents and 52 percent of its 11.2 million undocumented residents in 2012, the report stated.
Out of the estimated 11.2 million immigrants living in the U.S. without papers, approximately 4,256,000 of them were living with their U.S.-born children. Approximately 3 million of them had lived in the U.S. for a decade or more. Approximately 6.9 percent of all k-12 students in the U.S. were undocumented or lived with at least one undocumented immigrant parent, according to the study.
The president's new executive order would apply to these immigrants, and their children.
Although the number of immigrants from Mexico decreased, immigrant populations from Asia, Central America and the Caribbean experienced slight growth.
Some critics of the Obama amnesty said they don’t believe the number of undocumented immigrants from Mexico has decreased. A spokesman for the political action committee called Americans for Legal Immigration, said his organization believes illegal immigration is “surging.”
“What Obama’s doing is signalling to other countries that we’re wide open,” the spokesman said. “We’re bringing a large portion of the world down on our heads.”
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