Unauthorized Immigration to the United States: Annual Estimates and Components of Change, by State, 1990 to 2010

Abstract

We describe a method for producing annual estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population in the United Sates and components of population change, for each state and D.C., for 1990 to 2010. We quantify a sharp drop in the number of unauthorized immigrants arriving since 2000, and we demonstrate the role of departures from the population (emigration, adjustment to legal status, removal by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and deaths) in reducing population growth from one million in 2000 to population losses in 2008 and 2009. The number arriving in the U.S. peaked at more than one million in 1999 to 2001, and then declined rapidly through 2009. We provide evidence that population growth stopped after 2007 primarily because entries declined and not because emigration increased during the economic crisis. Our estimates of the total unauthorized immigrant population in the U.S. and in the top ten states are comparable to those produced by DHS and the Pew Hispanic Center. For the remaining states and D.C., our data and methods produce estimates with smaller ranges of sampling error.

The Effects of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals on the Educational Outcomes of Undocumented Students

“…As a result, researchers need to rely on imputations of undocumented status. These imputation methods have evolved considerably over the last few decades Cohn 2009, Warren andWarren 2013). However, some authors have shown that these imputations can lead to large bias in some applications (van Hook et al 2015).…”

U.S. Border Enforcement and Mexican Immigrant Location Choice

“…U.S. government surveys do not ask about immigrants' legal status. Instead, we use state-level estimates of unauthorized immigrants from Warren and Warren (2013), multiplied by the proportion of immigrants who are Mexican (according to the state-year cell of the CPS panel)…”

“…In these regressions, we replace controls for the Mexican immigrant unemployment rate and hourly wage with those for the relevant subpopulation, but all other covariates are unchanged. In columns (1)- (2), we analyze shares of all non-Mexican immigrants and non-Mexican unauthorized immigrants, respectively, where the latter are constructed by multiplying the Warren and Warren (2013) estimates by the state's proportion of immigrants who are non-Mexican. In both cases, the OLS and IV coefficients are statistically indistinguishable from zero, in contrast to our earlier findings for Mexican immigrants.…”

“…Estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population by state-year are from Warren and Warren (2013). Warren and Warren (2013) use a residual method to estimate unauthorized population by state for each year from 1990 to 2010.…”

“…Estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population by state-year are from Warren and Warren (2013). Warren and Warren (2013) use a residual method to estimate unauthorized population by state for each year from 1990 to 2010. This method, common to the migration and demography literature, compares the total number of immigrants based on survey data (in this case, ACS and Decennial Census) to the total number of authorized immigrants based on administrative information (DHS records of legal permanent and non-immigrant residents).…”