Illegal immigrants are not overrunning the United States

Everybody knows that the federal government hasn't done anything to stem the flow of illegal immigration. Why else would Arizona have to take matters into its own hands?

Actually, a new study by the highly respected, independent, nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center demonstrates that the federal government has been effective in slowing illegal immigration, with an unfortunate assist by a job-poor economy.

Pew found that the average inflow of illegal immigrants fell by nearly two-thirds from 2007 through 2009, to 300,000 a year, from the 850,000 a year who entered illegally each year from March 2000 through March 2005.

That has reduced the total population of illegal immigrants to about 11.1 million, from more than 12 million in March 2007, roughly 8 percent.

Part of the reason for the reduction is the huge increase in border enforcement that began in the Clinton administration, and continued through the Bush administration and into the Obama administration. The federal government sent home 387,900 illegal immigrants in 2009, compared with 291,060 in 2007.

Another reason is the economy. About 7.8 million illegal immigrants were employed in March 2007, and about 7 million worked in March 2009. (In Pennsylvania, the survey found the illegal immigrant population to be less than 2 percent of the state population, and illegal immigrants to comprise less than 2 percent of the work force.)

The study does not suggest that illegal immigration is not a regional problem. Greatest reductions were in the Southeast, rather than the Southwest, for example.

It does demonstrate that the federal government has increased its effectiveness, and that the nation is not being overrun by an unchecked tide of illegal immigrants.

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