Recently, the Census Bureau reported that the foreign-born population has reached a record high of 32.5 million. This accounts for 11.5 percent of the United States’ 282.1 million total population. The report also shows that there are over three million more immigrants living in the United States in March 2002 compared with two years before. The government reports that, though the U.S. foreign-born population has reached a record high, the rate at which people came to America has slowed considerably since 2001. William Frey, a demographer at the Brooking Institute, explains that about 1.2 million people arrived in the country in the 12 months ending in March 2002, compared with 2.4 million in the previous year. He believes that the immigrants were kept out by government efforts to close immigration loopholes and provide closer scrutiny of those admitted to the country after the September 11 attacks coupled with the economic slowdown.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a group who favors tighter limits on immigration, believe that there has been no immigration slowdown and that the United States has not done enough to ramp up border enforcement, despite a reported increase in arrest. In the 1990’s when the foreign-born population rocketed to 30 million from 20 million, the immigrant population grew 1 million per year. Jeffery Passel, who studies immigration at the Urban Institute, said that although there are new restrictions on certain immigrants, longer waits for some visas and other targeted actions, there is little appetite for an across-the-board crackdown on immigration, because the country increasingly depends on foreign-born labor and residents.

The immigrant population makes up more than 60 percent of the labor force growth from 2000 through 2002. The new immigrant workers were recent arrivals, not the immigrant population who were already living in the United States. Studies from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University show that the economic turndown and harsher border control since September 11, 2001, did not reduce the number of immigrants coming to the United States (legally or illegally) in search of work. Immigrants’ desire for a better life in America overshadows their concerns about the economic slowdown and government restrictions.

The Department of Homeland Security immigration bureaus estimate that the undocumented immigrant population (which is not part of the Census Bureau report) was between 7 million and 8.5 million in 2000, which is up from 3.5 million 10 years earlier.