New report on California's illegal immigrants finds population of young families
A major new report profiling America's illegal immigrants estimates that 10 percent of California's work force is undocumented, while close to 14 percent of the state's schoolchildren have at least one parent in the country illegally.
This group of California K-12 kids is divided: Roughly two-thirds are U.S. citizens by birth and one-third are themselves illegal immigrants, according to the report issued Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C.
The report marks the first time Pew – a leading nonpartisan research center – has attempted to use census survey data to quantify this young population. Schools in California and many other states do not make official counts of these children or parents.
The estimates about children are part of the Pew report's broader portrait of where illegal immigrants live and work nationwide, their earnings and origins..
"What is striking about this population is it is a population made up of young families," said Jeffrey Passel, Pew senior demographer and the report's co-author.
The study found that 47 percent of U.S. households with an undocumented adult consist of couples with children. That rate is far higher than the 21 percent for native citizen households or the 35 percent for legal immigrants.
High levels of employment among men – 94 percent – is another marked characteristic among the undocumented, Passel said.
Illegal immigrants were about 4 percent of the U.S. population in 2008 but 5.4 percent of the U.S. work force, according to the study.
Two-thirds work in jobs on the lower-wage rungs of the services, construction, production and repair industries. Only 31 percent of U.S.-born workers fill these same jobs, the report found.
The study found that of all the offspring of these undocumented workers, about 73 percent are U.S. citizens by birth.
Fueling this trend is a significant rise in so-called "mixed status" families, Passel said. The number of U.S.-born children with at least one undocumented parent jumped from an estimated 2.7 million in 2003 to 4 million in 2008.
The estimated number of kids who are themselves undocumented fell slightly, from 1.6 million nationwide in 2003 to 1.5 million in 2008.
That decline could be due, in part, Passel said, to youths turning 18 and no longer counted as minors in surveys.
Passel's research found that Nevada and Arizona may surpass California in percentages of schoolchildren who are undocumented or have an undocumented parent – 17 percent and 15 percent, respectively.
The perception that illegal immigrants come to the United States for welfare and public education for their children has fueled political debate for years in California.
A 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling found it unconstitutional to bar children from public schools.
In 1994, California voters approved Proposition 187, which denied public services including education to undocumented immigrants. The measure was blocked by a federal judge who said it wasn't constitutional.
Now a group is circulating petitions for a possible ballot initiative titled the California Taxpayer Protection Act, which calls for issuing special birth certificates and limiting welfare payments to children of foreign parents.
Passel attributes the rise in the number of U.S.-born children to illegal immigrants' relative youth and high marriage and fertility rates.
Another factor, he said, is that greater border security has prompted more undocumented workers to remain on U.S. soil rather than returning seasonally to visit family, as Mexican workers once did in large numbers.
"Another reason they don't go home is they are being subsidized," said Ted Hilton, author of the California Taxpayer Protection Act.
He said Los Angeles County officials told him that 70 percent of child recipients of a cash program have illegal immigrant parents.
State officials told The Bee last year that only 10 percent of the money – half of it federal – for that cash program statewide goes to citizen children with undocumented parents. About 4 percent of the state's Medi-Cal budget is spent on illegal immigrants.
Passel said the education costs for the children of illegal immigrants are much more substantial than other costs.
Stanford University law and business professor Dan Siciliano, a scholar of immigration and the economy, said it's doubtful that these children will leave the United States.
It's in the interest of California and other states with large numbers of these children, he said, to integrate their parents for the benefit of the kids.
"As a big-planning economy," he said, "we should have the desire to make sure they're as educated as possible."
Labor unions are mobilizing to once again push for legalizing workers, emboldened by recent statements from Obama administration officials pledging to pursue such a policy.
Passel's research puts the current illegal immigrant population nationally at 11.9 million. California still has the greatest number of illegal immigrants, 2.7 million, double the number in 1990. But the state's share of the total undocumented population fell from 42 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 2008. ~
Call Susan Ferriss, Bee Capitol Bureau, 
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Comment: The whole immigration issue is a great test for the United States as to whether it will live up to its values about 'liberty and justice for all' or Amerika must admit its own xenophobic-racist hypocrisy. It is mainly White racists who are against the so-called Mexican illegal immigrants who have helped to create the material wealth in this country by contributing their own blood, sweat and tears.
Plus, we must not lose sight of the historic fact that the so-called Mexican illegal aliens are descendants of the original indigenous peoples who are the original owners of these lands and can never be foreigners inside the continental United States. All of our own blood descendants are of these lands I still claim as Aztlan! We never crossed any oceans and we never committed genocide against the original indigenous natives! Look at the whole present situation in the light of true history, not racist interpretations.
Human society is headed towards one global economy, one world order and though it will undergo great transformations no one can stop an inevitable karmic destiny. We now have way over 6 Billion people on this planet. Our basic survival needs are the primary key motivators for our continued struggling and working. These are survival needs, not mere options, but mandatory for continued physical survival
There is only one Mother Earth and we are all going to have to learn to live together in peace and harmony or there will be no peace and harmony for anyone! Humans are already an endangered species of life and have endangered all living beings upon Mother Earth! Let us all come together, unite together and look at a trasformation of the present state of property relations via global humane liberation , that is, a new global democratic socialism for all peoples. We should oppose the continued authority and domination of greedy corporate capitalism, not fight against each other when we all have the same basic survival needs: food, clothing, shelter, medical care and quality education!
Education for Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka: Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/
