Articles of Intrest
Alabama home to between 85,000 and 120,000 illegal immigrants, Pew Hispanic Center says
By Bob Sims, al.com
April 15, 2009, 8:20AM
The estimate from the Pew Hispanic Center is a rare count of that elusive and fluid population in Alabama, a state that has drawn an increasing number of immigrants over the last two decades but still is home to only a fraction of the estimated 11.9 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.
The center's report estimates that the illegal immigrant population in the state grew from about 40,000 in 2005. Two decades ago, an estimated 5,000 illegal immigrants lived in Alabama.
Now, after years of growth, recent trends show the illegal immigrant population growth nationwide is slowing, a shift attributed to the sinking economy and fewer jobs.
The Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., based its estimates mainly on March 2008 data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Authors of the report essentially derived the estimate by subtracting the legal immigrant population from the total foreign-born population to find an estimate of the unauthorized population. Illegal immigrants used to be concentrated in states such as California, Texas and Illinois but became more dispersed, said Jeffrey S. Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. Construction, service and factory jobs drew workers to Alabama and to other Southeastern states. "What began in the early '90s and what has continued ever since is the spreading out of the undocumented population," Passel said. 3.6 percent of work force (79,200) Raymond Mohl, a University of Alabama at Birmingham history professor who has studied immigration trends, said he doubts the state is getting many new immigrants now. The recession, along with a crackdown in immigration enforcement, are factors that keep them away, Mohl said. "Immigration has, historically, been tied to economic opportunity," he said. Isabel Rubio, the executive director of the Birmingham-based Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama, said her agency has seen an increase in the number of people it serves, largely because of the tough economic times. In January of this year, HICA helped twice as many people as it did in January of 2008, she said. Rubio said some people have left the area, but whether they are returning to their native countries or moving to other parts of the U.S. is uncertain. Researchers also looked at the demographics of the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. and concluded that it is a group of young, working families with children who are overwhelmingly U.S. citizens. Most of the children of illegal immigrants -- 73 percent -- are U.S. citizens, the report found. Citizens in the city of Fremont, Nebraska have voted to pass an immigration enforcement city ordinance that will prohibit the hiring and the renting of apartments to illegal aliens. The ordinance passed with 57% of the vote will likely face court challenges from opponents of the measure. The new ordinance will require all employers in the city to register and use E-Verify to check the worker eligibility status of all new hires. It will also require anyone looking to rent in the city to first obtain a license from the city, which will first check the applicants citizenship status before issuing the license. Illegal aliens will be denied the renter's license.
Across the Southeast, the number of illegal immigrants has been rising since the early 1990s. In the region, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina have the highest population of illegal immigrants -- an estimated 1 million in Florida, 475,000 in Georgia, and 350,000 in North Carolina.
The report concluded that illegal workers make up about 3.6 percent of Alabama's 2.2 million workers.
Illegal immigrants as a group also have high rates of poverty and low income, as a result of the types of jobs they have and their limited education, Passel said. They mostly work in the service, construction and manufacturing industries.
The city has experienced an increase in suspected illegal aliens after the opening of the Fremont Beef and Hormel meatpacking plants over the past few decades. Supporters of the ordinance say the step is needed to make up for the lack of federal enforcement of immigration laws.
"I don't think it's right to be able to rent to them or hire them," Fremont resident Trevor McClurg said in an Associated Press article. "They shouldn't be here in the first place."
