The accepted figure thrown around has been 11 to 12 million people in America without being registered or overstaying their visits here….
A new study from MIT and Yale raises that figure to 16.2 million to 29.5 million witha average of double the accepted figure to 22 million….
The studies figure has be challenged by others which is based almost solely on the US Census figure’s….
The study uses other outside data….
The people presenting the study aren’t happy with their findings which they worry could be used by Trump and others on the right to justify stronger efforts by ICE and border cops against illegal immigration …
The authors of the new study wondered whether they could come up with a mathematical model using several types of raw data released by the U.S government.
If it’s really that easy to come through the border, then a wall and more agents does make more sense.
The researchers said they were suspicious of a method that was based so heavily on one set of survey results from the Census Bureau. So they looked for additional models for making an estimate.
Using a variety of data compiled from 1990 to 2016, they formed a model that estimated how many people come into the U.S. illegally and subtracted it from the number of people in the U.S. illegally who leave.
The model showed that the population living in the U.S. without authorization in 2016 was at least 16.2 million and that it could have been as high as 29.5 million. The average estimate was 22 million.
“When we were testing out our model, we were thinking it’d be lower than 11 million. We even tried to get to that 11 million number and we couldn’t,” Fazel-Zarandi said.
Other researchers question the findings, saying that if the figure of 16.2 million were accurate, it would mean that the the number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally is 42% higher than the census statistics show — a figure that would seem to defy belief.
The problem with the new approach is that it generates errors that compound over time and that the amount of time studied was lengthy and seemsarbitrary, according to Randy Capps, director of research for U.S. programs at the Migration Policy Institute.
“The big issue with this study is that instead of using the U.S. Census Bureau survey and then comparing it to a model, they use a model” they created themselves, he said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty each year, and so those errors get wider and wider.”
The authors of the new study disagree….
…
Aarti Kohli, executive director at the Asian Law Caucus, said the study suggests that a majority of those living illegally in the U.S. have been here for more 15 years.
“What this study tells us is that we have many more mixed-status families, and it shows folks that they have integrated into our economy,” Kohli said. “They are working and living in our neighborhoods without us being aware.”…
16.2 million would be about 5 % (one twentieth) of the U.S. population of around 325 million.
29.5 million would be about 9 % (one eleventh).
You can take that two ways, of course: either migration control is even more urgent than previously supposed, or undocumented residence is now so much part of America’s demographic fabric that some other approach is warranted.
I have felt that it doesn’t matter how hard they try?
Illegals or un doucumemts aren’t going anywhere