The Pew Hispanic Center reported on Wednesday that the nation’s illegal immigration population was down 8 percent as of March 2009, the first major decrease in the illegal immigrant population in 20 years. According to the report, there were 11.1 million illegal immigrants in the United States as of March 2009, down from a modern peak of 12 million in March 2007.

As we’ve discussed in previous posts, immigration declined from 2007 to 2008. The new Pew report simply confirms that the decrease in the illegal immigrant population is continuing. Not coincidentally, U.S. unemployment remains stubbornly high and the economy is still in the doldrums, offering less opportunity for potential immigrants -- who increasingly choose to stay home until the U.S. economy improves.

Although it’s not exact, the Great Recession (started December 2007) and the modern peak of illegal immigration (March 2007) share an uncanny timing.   Illegal immigrant labor, though not legally recognized as such, is an integral part of the U.S. economy. When the economy grows, generating white-collar, high-paying jobs, there is a commensurate growth in jobs requiring low-skill labor, some of which are filled by illegal immigrants. Likewise, when the economy tanks, illegal immigrants are the first to go.

The anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) hailed the drop in the illegal immigrant population as a victory for enforcement. But as most experts view the recession as the main cause of the immigration decrease, the only proven way to lower illegal immigration would be to keep the economy weak for another couple of decades. Although this may appeal to CIS and some other Americans, most of us probably don’t want 20 years of 10 percent unemployment as a means of reducing illegal immigration.

The report also confirmed that while the “flow” of illegal immigration from Mexico decreased from an average of 500,000 per year during the early part of the decade to 150,000 annually from 2007-2009; the “stock” of Mexican immigrants in the United States has largely remained the same. With the Mexican economy as slow as the U.S. economy, there has not been a mass return migration.

Finally, the report noted that the percentage of illegal immigrants from Mexico increased to 60% of the total illegal immigrant population. While illegal immigrants from other parts of Latin America were more likely to return to their home countries over the past several years, the Mexican illegal immigrant population stayed put.

As Pia Orrenius, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, stated regarding the millions of illegal Mexican immigrants that are hunkering down and waiting for the economy to improve, “They are settled here. It is going to take more than a business cycle for them to move back to Mexico."

As policymakers return from recess to continue discussions on immigration reform, Mexico deserves particular focus and consideration. Currently, U.S.-Mexican relations are dominated by security and enforcement, both on the border and inside Mexico though the Merida Initiative.

U.S. foreign assistance to Mexico that includes development to reduce migration pressures could generate multiple foreign policy and domestic policy benefits and address illegal immigration at its source.

The images over the last three of weeks of the millions of people devastated by the flooding are heartbreaking and hard to fully comprehend. Entire communities have been destroyed. Families have fled to higher ground--leaving behind much of what they own and losing most, if not all, their assets.

For the United Nations and humanitarian agencies, responding to this crisis has been a logistical nightmare. So much of the country is covered in water. It is estimated that 20 million people have been affected, 4 million people are homeless, and 8 million people depend on aid for their survival. And the donations have not been flowing in. The United States has been the largest donor, seeing the risk that this crisis could further fuel extremism.

In the short run, the focus is on providing food and shelter, preventing the spread of water-borne diseases, including cholera. In the medium to long term, roads, bridges, and entire communities will have to be rebuilt and livelihoods restored.

This is a perilous time for those affected. Pakistan already has very high rates of malnutrition. A quarter of the population is undernourished--they don't receive enough calories per day--and 38 percent of children under age 5 are underweight for their age. This crisis risks substantially increasing malnutrition rates. A prolonged period without food and the right nutrients, especially among children under 2, can have lifelong consequences.

Poor nutrition between that crucial window of opportunity from conception to 24 months can affect physical and cognitive development, leading to poor health and poor productivity into adulthood. Recent studies in the British medical journal The Lancet have shown that this can cost individuals dearly in terms of lost income, and it can cost countries 3 percent of GDP where malnutrition is high. To learn more, read the Institute's briefing paper on maternal and child nutrition.

For the pregnant women, nursing mothers, and young children in flood-affected areas, the need is urgent. It is vital that humanitarian aid agencies have the resources to meet the needs of this particular group. Otherwise, the country will be recovering from this flood for generations.

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s proposal to modify the 14^th amendment (yes, the one that granted slaves citizenship after the Civil War) is perhaps the clearest signal yet of the depth of anger over immigration.

The change to the amendment isn’t going to happen—and don’t expect to hear much about it after the November election—but the mere fact that it’s being discussed, even as a purely political tactic, speaks volumes about the current feeling toward immigrants among wide swaths of the American public (recent polling gives the proposal the support of almost half of all Americans.)

Behind the proposal and anti-immigration feeling in general is the view that legalizing immigrants devalues U.S. citizenship. If you can just cross the border and become a citizen (after paying a fine, waiting for years, undergoing a background check, learning English, and working jobs that no one else wants), what’s the value of being an American?

But as anti-immigrant voices protest that amnesty debases citizenship, they haven’t defined what citizenship means or what it’s worth. In this respect illegal immigration can be instructive, because immigrants—much more than most Americans—know intimately the value of living legally in the United States.

In 2007, 27 percent of Americans carried U.S. passports. Historically, most Americans choose not to use their U.S. citizenship—which opens doors around the world—to travel internationally. But illegal immigrants are dying to get into the United States—something they wouldn’t be obliged to do if there was a more rational system for matching immigrant labor with available U.S. jobs.

From 1998 to 2009, 4,375 immigrants—men, women, and children—died trying to cross the border. In 2009, the number of deaths increased even as overall immigration decreased thanks to increased border security. The number of deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border during this decade surpassed—by a factor of 10—that of the Berlin Wall during its 28-year history. The escape from poverty has proved more deadly than the escape from communism.

Voting is another right of citizenship, but historically U.S. citizens haven’t been keen on exercising it. In 2008, in what was the presidential campaign of a generation, 64 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, the highest turnout in decades. If an epic presidential election draws only six of 10 voters, what does that say about the value of voting to most Americans?

Illegal immigrants can’t participate in the U.S. political process, but in the primary area of American public life which they are allowed to engage—labor—no other group has higher rates of male employment. Almost all (94 percent) of illegal immigrant working-age men are in the labor force, surpassing legal immigrants (85 percent) and U.S.-born men (83 percent.) And this participation is in a much smaller range of jobs than are open to the U.S.-born and that most U.S.-born workers find unattractive.

Another traditional duty of citizenship is serving in the armed forces. But with a professional warrior class fighting in two wars, less than 1 percent of Americans is on active duty. Immigrants, on the other hand, have always been a major part of America’s fighting force. The foreign-born comprised half of all recruits by the 1840s, and during the Civil War 20 percent of Union Army soldiers were foreign-born—including many Irish and Germans who would be considered illegal immigrants in today’s terms.

The contemporary military doesn’t allow illegal immigrants to knowingly join, nevertheless in 2008 there were more than 65,000 foreign-born (legal immigrants) serving—and dying—in the military, about 5 percent of all service members. Since September 2001, 111 immigrants have been granted retroactive citizenship after being killed in action.

And while anti-immigration activists spin fantasies of migrants timing their border-crossings to have children in the United States—and subsequently suck up as much welfare money as they can—research shows that immigrants have paid $7 billion in taxes to the Social Security system, money that they will never see and which Uncle Sam gets to keep.

But perhaps the largest advantage of being legal isn’t really economic or political. It’s how easy it is to be with family and friends, and that’s why the deeply misguided notion behind the amendment proposal is so sad. Although some immigrant couples have children on U.S. soil, many others were forced to choose between supporting their families economically in the U.S. or being with them physically in their home country.

If you talk to immigrants, many of them have stories of how they are forced live apart from their spouse, parent, or child for years. They’ve often missed family events: A granddaughter’s birth, a cousin’s wedding, the passing of a grandmother. You hear stories about families that are broken—sometimes permanently—due to their immigration status. Illegal immigrants are sometimes forced to choose between a family unified in poverty or a dispersed family with a bit more money in its pocket.

In this regard, citizenship—or at least legal status—has real value for these families in a way that sloganeering anti-immigration activists can’t match.

Echoing the state-federal conflicts of the 1960s civil rights movement, a federal judge today blocked key components of a popular Arizona state law that would – among other measures – require police officers to ascertain the immigration status of persons encountered while enforcing other laws and allow officers to make warrantless arrests of suspected illegal immigrants.

The judge’s ruling on the Obama Administration lawsuit is likely to fuel current grassroots conservative rage toward Washington and keep the immigration issue at the forefront of voters’ minds as the November midterm elections approach. The law was widely criticized by progressives and many conservatives as a violation of civil rights and an infringement of federal authority, but it has enjoyed the support of a majority of Arizonans -- and Americans -- who increasingly believe that the 4 percent of the population who are illegal immigrants are somehow responsible for national decline.

Although numerous studies and research show that immigrants are not the cause of rising crime, unemployment, or the destruction of public services, as a disempowered minority of foreign origin they have become the contemporary targets of choice for a seemingly eternal national hysteria that seeks out enemies upon which to lay collective blame for economic hardship and crime.

As the immigration reform discussion evolves in Washington, the decision of federal judge Susan Bolton in Arizona provides illegal immigrants – mostly poor working families – with a bit of breathing room while they hope for more rationality from Washington and from Americans.

For more information on Bread for the World Institute’s immigration research and analysis, please visit the Institute's website. You can also subscribe to our blog, Institute Notes, or to blog posts on immigration only.

“What part of illegal don’t you understand?”

This question—usually launched by immigration restrictionists and aimed at immigration advocates—is a good one. The United States considers itself a country of laws, and letting people off the hook for major legal transgressions isn’t (officially) tolerated or popular.

But in assessing the status of illegal immigrants and the penalties they deserve for unlawful action, it’s helpful to consider the severity of their transgressions. What should the penalty be for crossing the border unlawfully in order to sustain your family?

We also need to consider that laws change. Immigrants’ reasons for leaving home and traveling to the United States have remained remarkably constant. End-of-the-world hysteria opposing immigration is also old. What has changed most is immigration law and how we classify newcomers.

The earliest European immigrants to North America—mostly English arriving in Virginia and New England during the early 1600s—were considered settlers in an open continent. Immigration was encouraged and restrictions about who could migrate were minimal.

In a reversal of the contemporary dynamic, these early European colonial immigrants excluded the native culture from the incipient social order and defined the colonies on their own terms, largely as the domain of English Anglo-Saxon Protestant immigrants. Restrictionists have mythologized these early immigrants and contrasted them with later waves of less desirable newcomers. But the composition of the early settlers would have horrified today’s anti-immigrant activists.

Researchers estimate that England sent 50,000 convicts to America in the 18th century and a smaller number in the 17th century. Between half and two-thirds of all early immigrants to America were indentured servants. The earliest immigrants from northwest Europe included few high-born. Most were uneducated agricultural laborers. In spite of this, they were encouraged by the British government to travel to America to labor in the South’s growing plantation economy.

Even in New England, where English immigrants typically possessed more agricultural and artisanal skills, most were defined as “ordinary workmen with moderate to low social status.” Although higher socioeconomic status migrants followed later in the 17th century, the majority of immigrants continued to be drawn from the lower social classes.

In the post-Civil War era, new and large streams of immigrants began arriving from southern and eastern Europe. The Slavs, Italians, and Jews who arrived in the United States by the millions were seen as an existential threat to the country’s Anglo-Saxon Protestant core. Groups such as the Immigration Restriction League sought to reduce immigration to prevent those deemed “undesirable … or injurious to our national character.”

Today these groups are celebrated by anti-immigration activists as “model” immigrants who followed the rules in arriving in the United States legally, unlike Latin American border-jumpers. But at the time these immigrants were portrayed as Europe’s trash being dumped on America’s shores. Public depictions of immigrants as rats and snakes were not uncommon. Immigrants were seen as harbingers of organized crime and radical political ideologies.

But even as fear of immigration grew, legal restrictions against the entry of Europeans were minimal, even for the poor. Ellis Island immigrants were so successful at adhering to U.S. immigration law largely because it barely existed. Of the 12 million immigrants who passed through Ellis Island, only 2 percent were denied entry to the United States. Upon arrival, the vast majority of immigrants — most of them poor and uneducated — spent several hours at Ellis Island before they were legally admitted to America.

The legality threshold for 19th- and 18th-century European immigrants is incomparable to the gauntlet of restrictions facing contemporary immigrants. The immigration bureaucracy has increased so that today’s immigrants—perhaps more educated and skilled than Europeans arriving a century ago—face unprecedented barriers. It can take years for a immigrant with family already in the United States to gain legal entry.

So while restrictionists state “the law is the law,” the fact is that the laws facing newcomers have changed radically. The law turns immigrants into illegal aliens and aliens into national pioneers. If we were sticking with Ellis Island Rules, most Mexican immigrants would stop at the border for a few hours before they were permitted to make their way in America with the government’s stamp of approval.