Obviously you have read the Jeffery Passel Studies put out by the Pew Center. Those studies and their successors are currently the most widely accepted best estimate of the number of Illegal Immigrants in the USA. Where the data you cite falls down is that Mr. Passel assumed that the Census Data on the foreign born includes ALL Illegal Immigrants, when in fact it does not. If you look at the data from the 2000 Census it says that 31.1 million people in America are foreign born. And the Census Bureau Estimate for 2008 is 38.1 million. Mr. Passel, among others estimated that in addition to the 1.0 to 1.5 million Legal Immigrants that came to the USA between 2000 and 2008, there were also another 4.0 million Illegal Immigrants. These figures just do not add up. And if you read the methodology of the Census Bureau they clearly state that what they call “Illegal Aliens” represent a significant portion of what they term the “undercount” of the number of people in the USA. Therefore, if you do the math, Passel assumes that the US Census data counts every last Illegal Immigrant, even though it does not. So if you assume that the census includes no Illegal Immigrants the proportion of our Foreign Born population is 22%. If you assume that they do they count every last Illegal Immigrant the percentage is 30%. But that matters not, as either statistic still relegates the statistics of Illegal Immigrants to being statistically overwhelmed by that of Legal Immigrants.

As far as your claim to have never seen the Rob Paral Study, you failed to note my statement “Rob Paral & Associates study and it’s predecessors”. I have read each of these studies as they come out and they ALL suffer from the same statistical flaw. The authors of these studies seem to think that a falsehood repeated often enough begins to take on the semblance of truth.

As for job expansion happening overseas being bad for America, history does not support your arguments. In the past, after the institution of immigration control limited the inflow of immigrants, when the USA had more jobs than there were workers, excess jobs were exported to other countries. A few decades ago that resulted in the economic development of Korea, Taiwan, and the other economic powers of the Pacific called the “Four Tigers”. And before that the USA fueled the post World War II economic resurgence of Western Europe and Japan. At no point did this development make the USA economically weak. While USA economic expansion in those countries made those countries and the USA strong. Yes it did hurt people in some industries. The Textile industry is a great example of this. Yet we had the two largest economic expansions in USA history during Clinton and Reagan. Care to explain why this could be possible if foreign economic expansion was so harmful?

Today we mismanage foreign economic expansion as a sacrifice on the alter of free trade. And it has hurt us. And it has given the greedy folks that want to horde all economic expansion in the USA the opportunity to torpedo foreign economic expansion. But if you truly believe that Illegal Immigration is necessary to fuel a need for workers in the USA, here is as example of how wrong headed this idea is:

Per the Pew Hispanic Center six million Mexicans have illegally immigrated to the USA, over three million of which are working. Per the CIA World Fact Book the 2006 GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of Mexico was $741.5 billion and the Labor Force numbered 38 million. That means that the average GDP per working person was $19,513. If the USA had exported three million jobs to Mexico and paid the average GDP rate (a mere $9.38/hr.) and the six million illegal immigrants would have stayed home, we would have pumped $59 billion in wages into the Mexican economy. In the USA economy approximately 57% of our GDP is made up of wages. Wages generate business, which in turn generates more wages, which in turn generate more business. Assuming this same job multiplier for Mexico means that an additional $59 billion in wages added to the Mexican economy would increase the GDP of Mexico by more that $103 billion or 14%. And the GDP of the USA would increase by as much a $5 billion with repatriated profits without the need to bring in a single Illegal Immigrant. This five billion in repatriated profits would in turn expand the USA economy by stimulating the need to hire people through demand pull consumer spending and encourage the hiring of management level professionals to manage the foreign business.

As I said before, economies co-operate. It is businesses that compete. Too many lazy businesses would rather import millions of workers to the USA while letting other countries founder rather than getting off their lazy behinds and attempting foreign expansion when they run out of workers in the USA. And they owe you many thanks for making excuses for them.

How many times has the U.S. given amnesty to illegal aliens? Seven since 1986. Amnesty-with-promises-of-future-enforcement has been tried and obviously failed! Each time amnesty is given, the flood of illegal aliens rises.The welfare safety net for illegals costs U.S. taxpayers, according to the Edwin Rubenstein Report of 2008, a whopping $346 billion annually.

While illegal aliens arrive from an endless line, 15 million American citizens cannot find work. As of June 2009, 32.2 million American citizens subsist on food stamps. And over 13 million American children live under the poverty line. While U.S. citizens wobble, stagger and clutch for their fading language, culture and viable society—our government force-feeds 138,000 immigrants into this nation every 30 days. Another 100,000 illegal criminal migrants stampede our borders every month.

Let’s face it! All forms of immigration, legal & illegal destroy the foundation of the United States of America. Massive immigration overwhelms our environment, infrastructure, culture and language. Those who come here illegally, steal our IDs and ignore our laws have already demonstrated they lack the honesty and decency to ever become American citizens. Immigration cannot and must not continue at its present clip of over 2.4 million annually. We, The American People refuse–absolutely refuse, to be sold on another path to citizenship.

We are broke. Yet at the worst point in at least 30 years for our economy, Obama and the Democrats wish to pass another amnesty. And to boot, they want a cap-and-trade plan that will cripple business, decimate jobs, and add $1500-$3000 per year in extra energy costs to the average American family. We cannot keep up with it. We cannot afford it. We cannot withstand it. We cannot cope with it. We will not survive it. This is why the American voices calling for a complete change in Congress, from top to bottom, are growing.

Tell your Reps, NO Amnesty. NO Cap & Trade (cap & tax). NO Govt. run healthcare or it will be their jobs on the line in coming elections!

I am a legal immigrant, latino, but I am against illegal immigration. I work in a restaurant where the 80% of the workers are illegals. But are not just employers who hire illegals, there are individual personas that hire illegals as nannys, gardeners, drivers. I can’t believe that US citizens do this.

And when I see, for example, a sport match, lets say, futbol soccer, the US team is like the foreign team. US citizens are going to be strangers in their own country.

Americans, wake up.

The millions of immigrants who came here legally through Ellis Island were NOT illegal immigrants.
Most living Americans are descended from those LEGAL immigrants. Also, Europeans who came here before there was a United States weren’t illegal immigrants because there were no immigration laws in place at that time in North America. You can’t violate a law that doesn’t exist. At the worst, they could be classified as “unwelcome visitors”.

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As long as you’re being “truthful”, how about mentioning that the Immigration Policy Center is the research arm of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Now, do you really believe that immigration lawyers are going to pay for a report that DOESN’T claim that legalization would benefit the country? You should also note that any of the purported economic benefits the report claims, such as rising wages, depend upon the government being able to totally eliminate additional illegal immigration and to restrict future legal immigration. I have yet to see AILA or any pro-amnesty group supporting enforcement of the immigration laws or limiting future immigration.

Fact is, illegal aliens have had a de facto amnesty is California. Yet, California’s economy has headed down the tubes, in part because of massive expenditures to support low-wage illegal aliens workers who would still be low-wage workers even with amnesty because they lack education and skills.

As for which studies are “flawed,” I’m not sure Norski would be a good judge of that. He or she writes: “Illegal Immigrants barely make up 22% of the USA Immigrant Population per a recent Pew Center estimate and per USA Census Data.” Where does the Pew Center say that? The Center’s major study of the unauthorized population from 2006 said: “Unauthorized migrants accounted for 30% of the foreign-born population in 2005. Another 28% were legal permanent residents, and31% were U.S. citizens by naturalization.”

http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/61.pdf

A 2008 Pew study estimated that the undocumented population still made up about 4% of the US population in 2008, which again means about 30% of the foreign-born population.

http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=94

But Norski gives the game away in his or her suggestion that the US needs to export jobs to countries like Mexico. That’s what the US has been doing for the past 30 years. Now the US and the Mexican economies are both in shambles; our wages have been stagnant, and Mexican wages have fallen. No one has benefited–except for the employers who have exploited low-wage workers on both sides of the border. Why exactly does Norski advocate that?