Undocumented immigration in the United States

Undocumented immigration (also known as illegal immigration) refers to entry into or residence in a country in circumvention of that country's immigration laws. It includes both illegal border crossings and overstaying beyond the limit of a visa or other lawful means of entry. In the twentieth century, undocumented immigration became a major social, economic, and political issue in the United States in particular. By the early twenty-first century, there were estimated to be as many as 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the US.

Reception of undocumented immigrants has ranged from nativist hostility to a more welcoming approach in cities that have declared themselves immigrant sanctuaries. Politicians have often demonized undocumented immigrants for allegedly straining public resources, taking jobs from citizens, and contributing to crime. However, other observers have contested such assertions, while noting that certain sectors of the US economy have relied heavily on undocumented workers. The issue of undocumented immigration has driven much debate over the US immigration system in general, border control policy, and other related subjects.

A Special Problem

An important aspect of undocumented immigration in the United States that is uniquely American lies in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Its definition of citizenship makes all persons born within the United States American citizens, regardless of the citizenship of their parents. Few other countries are similarly generous in awarding citizenship, and some observers suggest that the American principle effectively encourages undocumented immigration, as migrants may feel that gaining US citizenship for their children is worth the risks of entering the country illegally.

Regardless of whether US birthright citizenship law directly motivates undocumented immigration, it is a fact that many children are born in the United States to parents who are in the country without documentation. Consequently, when US immigration authorities deport undocumented immigrants who are parents, they may separate parents from their citizen children. This poses a contradiction in American immigration principles, as separating family members runs counter to the stated US immigration goal of family unification. Immigration raids that have led to the deportation of parents while leaving their American-born children homeless have occasionally provided federal immigration agencies with public-relations embarrassments.

By the early 2010s, debate over immigration policy also increasingly included disputes over terminology. Supporters of pro-immigrant reform characterized the common term “illegal immigrant” as dehumanizing and racialized, and often suggested the term “undocumented immigrant” in its place. Some scholars eschewed both “undocumented” and “illegal” as imprecise, preferring alternatives such as “unauthorized migrants.” Usage of specific terms by media outlets, politicians, and others often reflected political polarization as views on immigration became a major component of the so-called culture wars between conservatives and liberals.

Demographics of Undocumented Immigration

While immigrants have entered the United States without documentation throughout the nation's history, the number increased rapidly between 1990 and 2007, driving unprecedented national attention to the issue. Over the following decade the undocumented population stabilized and even declined slightly, a trend that was initially linked to both depressed economic conditions in the United States that reduced employment opportunities and more stringent security controls, including a major increase in the number of US Border Patrol agents working along the Mexican border. By the mid-2010s advanced technology such as drones and sensors was also increasingly used to supplement border agents, leading the government to proclaim the border more secure than ever before. However, rates of undocumented immigration continued to fluctuate depending on a wide variety of both push and pull immigration factors. Many sources identified a significant spike in undocumented immigration in 2021.

The bulk of undocumented immigrants to the United States have long been people classified as Hispanic or Latino. According to 2010 US Census estimates, a majority (59 percent) had come from Mexico, with 11 percent from Asia, 11 percent from Central America, 7 percent from South America, and smaller percentages from other areas. However, according to the Pew Research Center in 2021, the demographic makeup of the undocumented immigrant population had changed considerably by 2017, with the those born in Mexico (47 percent) falling out of the majority for the first time since at least 1990. Indeed, by 2015 studies suggested there was net outflow of Mexican immigrants from the United States. Over this same period the number of unauthorized immigrants from Central America and Asia increased, while other regions of origin remained steady. The Pew Research Center noted that these trends meant a growing share of the undocumented immigrant population (66 percent in 2017) had lived in the US for over a decade.

A main motivation for crossing the border has long been the quest for better employment. Undocumented immigrants can be found in many sectors of the US economy. Various surveys have indicated that 3 to 4 percent of undocumented immigrants are employed in farmwork, 21 to 33 percent in service industries, 16 to 19 percent in construction and related jobs, 12 percent in sales, 15 to 16 percent in production industries, 10 percent in management, and 8 percent in transportation. It should be noted that these and other estimates regarding unauthorized immigrants are necessarily rough due to the difficulty in obtaining reliable data, and may vary considerably between sources.

Economic factors, along with geographic ones, also inform the distribution of undocumented immigrants throughout the United States. The largest such populations are in California (with estimates generally around 2.2 million people based on mid-2010s data) and Texas (about 1.6 million), due to both those states' large economies and proximity to the Mexican border. Florida and New York were estimated to have undocumented immigrant populations exceeding 725,000, followed by New Jersey, Illinois, and Georgia in the 400,000–500,000 range. Again, however, estimates often varied widely across sources, and most official government data is subject to a lag of several years at least.

Public Responses to Undocumented Immigration

Undocumented immigration has been controversial throughout US history, but by the twenty-first century it had become a major topic of public debate. Many scholars note that while this growing attention was in part simply due to the steady rise in undocumented arrivals, other broad social and economic forces also combined to make the issue more heated than ever before. For instance, researchers have suggested that the significant economic upheaval of the era (linked to trends such as globalization and the rise of the internet) contributed to a wave of nationalism and anti-immigrant backlash. Politicians often capitalized on this sentiment, stirring fears about the impact of undocumented immigration to rally support.

Aside from the basic issue of legality, views on undocumented immigration often focus on economic issues. Groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) cite studies asserting that undocumented immigrants cost the US and state governments more than the workers pay in taxes. According to this view, unauthorized immigration degrades public education, health care, and other services for citizens, with the heaviest burdens falling on the poor. Critics have also complained that the flow of undocumented immigrants across the US-Mexico border in particular has a negative impact on US public lands in the region. For example, Arizona’s Fish and Wildlife Service has reported numerous abandoned cars and tons of garbage on the state’s Buenos Aires wildlife refuge. Park officials have also reported fires set by immigrants that can flared out of control, causing considerable environmental damage and costing millions of dollars to extinguish.

However, many pro-immigrant groups counter that undocumented immigrant workers actually have a net positive economic impact. Such workers pay billions of dollars per year into the Social Security system from which they will receive no benefits. According to a paper in The Tax Lawyer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Bar Association, undocumented immigrants pay more in taxes than they cost in social services. Advocates also note that undocumented workers represent a crucial labor source for many American industries.

At times, both anti-immigrant and pro-immigrant groups have taken action on undocumented immigration into their own hands. For example, in the 2000s, the Minuteman Project gained media attention as a private organization attempting to police the US-Mexico border while also lobbying Congress for increased enforcement of immigration laws. Other similar posses and vigilante groups formed as well, often drawing sharp controversy. Supporters applauded such groups as beneficial to border security, but opponents criticized them as unlawful and dangerous, especially as some vigilantes assaulted people they believed to be undocumented immigrants. On the other hand, some pro-immigrant activists have patrolled the border to offer medical aid, food, and water to migrants crossing the desert regions during hot weather.

Some American communities—including several major US cities—have declared themselves as “sanctuary cities.” These municipal governments have instructed city employees, usually including police, to avoid cooperating with federal immigration authorities seeking undocumented immigrants. Opponents say that sanctuary city measures violate federal law because the cities are in effect creating their own immigration policies, an area of law that only the US Congress has authority to change. City authorities in many of these urban areas have countered by saying that undocumented immigrants have brought them more benefits than they have cost. Proponents also often cite the moral tradition of the US as a haven for asylum seekers and refugees.

Other Trends and Political Developments

As the total undocumented immigrant population in the US peaked in 2007, there was initially a similar observed decline in border encounters between US law enforcement and undocumented migrants. By 2008, the number of arrests at US borders had declined for three consecutive years, dropping to levels not witnessed since 1973, when the total population of the United States was much lower. In 2008 the US Border Patrol reported making 724,000 arrests, 17 percent fewer than in 2007. Data indicated that the number of border arrests actually had peaked two decades earlier, in 1986, at 1.7 million. The Border Patrol credited tighter security, including the construction of fences along parts of the US-Mexico border, for the long-term decline.

The number of migrant encounters reported by the Border Patrol continued to decline through the mid-2010s, mirroring the decline in the overall number of undocumented immigrants. However, border encounters began to increase significantly again in the late 2010s. After a brief sharp decline related to the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, that number spiked even higher over the next few years. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported over 224,000 such encounters in May 2022, surpassing the previous monthly record from March 2000.

Meanwhile, undocumented immigration continued to consistently draw heavy media coverage and political attention. During the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017, even as the overall number of undocumented immigrants living in the country decreased, many Republicans amplified and sensationalized the issue amid deepening partisan polarization and the so-called culture wars. Such critics characterized undocumented immigrants as inherently criminal and blamed them for many of the nation's economic struggles. Conservatives frequently attacked Obama and fellow Democrats as weak on border security, and some went as far as to accuse Democrats of actively encouraging undocumented immigration. Liberals argued that undocumented immigrants made important contributions to the US economy and deserved to be treated humanely. Many sociologists suggested that the rise of anti-immigration sentiment during this period was linked to large-scale societal change and economic disruption due to globalization and technological advances.

The Obama administration itself pursued a relatively moderate stance on immigration overall. The number of deportations increased every year of Obama's first term, and border fencing was extended or improved in some areas. On the other hand, Obama did prominently support some more lenient policies, particularly the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program established in 2012, which allowed people who were brought to the US as undocumented immigrants in childhood a path to remain in the country rather than face immediate deportation. DACA, along with the related DREAM Act proposal (which sought to offer a path to citizenship for unauthorized migrants who arrived as children), became significant points of controversy. Obama also allocated $4 billion in 2014 to address an influx of tens of thousands of children, most without a parent or guardian, from Central American countries—especially Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—seeking asylum at the southern US border amid violence and economic turmoil in their home nations.

In 2016, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, a Republican, made xenophobic rhetoric against undocumented immigrants a centerpiece of his campaign. He frequently repeated the common (but statistically unsubstantiated) right-wing claim that undocumented immigrants caused increased crime in the US, and promised to build a massive wall along the entire US-Mexico border. Although Trump's controversial, racialized views received much criticism, they resonated with a substantial base of voters and helped him win the presidency. The Trump administration (2017–21) subsequently put in place a number of policies that aimed to reduce overall immigration to the United States, both documented and undocumented.

In early 2018 Trump announced a zero-tolerance policy for illegal border crossings, which led to widespread family separations as migrant parents and their minor children were detained in separate facilities. There was much public outcry against this policy, with critics noting that many families would not be reunited for years, if ever. In June of that year, a federal judge issued an injunction temporarily stopping the practice. Meanwhile, Trump continued to promote a border wall, even declaring a national emergency in early 2019 to secure special military construction funding after Congress blocked his previous efforts to fund the project. Congress voted to overturn the declaration of a border emergency, but Trump vetoed the resolution. Nevertheless, relatively little actual border wall was ultimately built. Another anti-immigration measure was instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020, as the Trump administration exercised Title 42, a seldom-employed legacy legal mechanism, to deny entry to migrants seeking political asylum in the United States.

Federal policy on undocumented immigration and related issues shifted again under Democratic president Joe Biden. The Biden administration immediately began the process of overturning Trump-era anti-immigration policies after taking office in January 2021. Work on the border wall was halted and funding was canceled. In April 2022 the administration indicated it would not renew Title 42 after it expired in May 2023. This decision drew considerable controversy, as many observers suggested it would lead to a new wave of migrants at the border, and more than twenty states petitioned the US Supreme Court to allow the measure to continue. In February 2023 the Supreme Court canceled arguments for the case, however.

In response to public criticism over increasing numbers of undocumented immigrants attempting to enter the country, the Biden administration sought other mechanisms to stem the flow. In June 2023 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Biden administration in two relevant cases. One upheld the administration's decision to focus its immigration resources on public safety threats rather than attempt to detain and deport every unauthorized immigrant, which had been challenged by several Republican-led states. The other case upheld the constitutionality of a decades-old law criminalizing the act of encouraging illegal immigration.

Immigration Scams

The intense desire of impoverished foreigners to get the documents they need to work in the United States has spawned many criminal activities that prey on would-be immigrants. Creators of these schemes have developed many ruses, all with the attitude that their victims are unlikely to complain to law enforcement or government authorities. “Coyotes” routinely conduct many people across the southern border for fees ranging in the thousands of dollars per person. Entire cargo ships of undocumented immigrants have arrived from Asia and unloaded people at sea after charging each of them tens of thousands of dollars. So-called Mohawk “warriors” have brought immigrants into the United States from Canada through the Akwesasne (St. Regis) reservation on the US-Canadian border.

The website of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) maintains a page on common scams directed at would-be immigrants, undocumented or otherwise. These include phone calls claiming a problem with immigration paperwork in order to obtain credit card numbers or other personal information; scams manipulating the different meanings of the term "notario publico" in many Latin American countries and the United States; local businesses claiming guaranteed access to visas, green cards, or employment authorization documents; phony websites; false claims of winning the annual diversity visa (DV) lottery; and any correspondence purporting to be from the defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Additionally, after President Barack Obama issued executive actions in November 2014 that included provisions for some unauthorized immigrants to remain in the United States without risk of deportation after passing a background check, the USCIS warned unauthorized immigrants to beware of offers to apply for the program before it had been implemented.

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