Illegals figure drops by 11%

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By Stephen Dinan

The Department of Homeland Security is claiming success after an independent study released Wednesday argued that stepped-up enforcement efforts have reduced the illegal immigrant population by 11 percent since August.

The report, by the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that calls for more enforcement and immigration restrictions, says the "likely illegal immigrant population" of lesser-educated Hispanics ages 18 to 40 dropped significantly from August through May. The center argues that this decline corresponds with stepped-up enforcement efforts after the failure of a "comprehensive immigration reform" bill in June 2007.

The finding goes to the heart of the immigration debate. Those advocating enforcement say existing laws can reduce the illegal immigrant population through attrition without resorting to amnesty. Immigrant rights groups say legalization is the only way to address that population.

"You have just the natural phenomenon: One cop pulls over a speeder, and everyone else on the highway slows down. What you have to do is make enforcement a real possibility to begin to affect behavior," said Steven A. Camarota, research director at CIS, which produced the study based on U.S. Census Bureau reports.

After President Bush's immigration bill failed to pass last year, in part because voters didn't think the government would follow through on border security and interior enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security stepped up enforcement of existing laws. Some states and localities also followed suit, imposing penalties on businesses that don't verify employees' work eligibility or allowing state and local police to enforce immigration laws.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Brandon Alvarez-Montgomery said the report's findings confirm what they have "heard anecdotally about illegal aliens leaving on their own and what we have seen in other indicators at the Department of Homeland Security."

"Certainly a strong program of interior enforcement has made entering and staying in the United States illegally less attractive as the probability of being arrested and detained is greater than ever before," he said, pointing to better tools for businesses to check workers, and to ramped-up workplace raids and efforts to deport fugitive aliens and criminals.

Meanwhile, ICE announced a pilot program to allow hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who are defying deportation orders to come forward and set up a schedule for leaving. The voluntary program would allow the immigrants not to be detained in the interim, would remove some penalties and would give them time to get their affairs in order.

ICE portrayed the move as a chance for immigrant-rights groups, who have criticized the agency for its fugitive raids, to "step up to the table" and prove they want an orderly system.

"One of the criticisms we face though, from immigrant advocacy groups and from faith-based organizations and community groups, is there's a better way to do this - if we just gave people an opportunity to turn themselves in, they would do so," said Jim Hayes, acting director of ICE's Office of Detention and Removal.