Third year of fewer illegal immigrants caught

McALLEN (AP) - The number of Border Patrol apprehensions nationwide dropped for a third consecutive year, falling more than 17 percent to a level not seen since 1973, according to new government data.

The U.S. Border Patrol - charged with catching illegal immigrants near the nation's boundaries - had 724,000 apprehensions in 2008, according to the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Immigration Statistics. That's down from nearly 1.2 million in 2005.

Ninety-seven percent of those apprehensions were on the southwest border with Mexico and 91 percent of those caught were Mexican.

The report cited the slow U.S. economy and tougher border security as possible factors contributing to the drop.

The number of apprehensions hit its highest level in 1986, when Border Patrol made nearly 1.7 million apprehensions.

But apprehension statistics are a crude measure of immigration since they only capture those who get caught.

Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, said the data appear to follow other reports that showed steep declines in Mexican immigration.

A survey by the Mexican government showed similar back-to-back 20-percent annual drops in the number of its citizens departing for the United States, Passel said. The result is that the foreign-born Mexican population in the United States has essentially stopped growing, he said.

Immigrants come to the United States for many reasons, but for Mexicans the main reason is for jobs "and there aren't any," Passel said.

"It's a flow that is very sensitive to the economic situation in the U.S.," he said.

While enhanced border security may play a role, it is difficult to parse that out because the decline corresponds so closely with the economic situation, he said. The real test will come when the economy bounces back.

The Border Patrol grew to more than 18,000 agents by the end of 2008, more than doubling during the presidency of George W. Bush.

There were 12.7 million Mexican immigrants living in the United States in 2008, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. About 55 percent of those were here illegally.

The money many of them sent back to family in Mexico, was a critical source of cash for that country that is drying up with the recession.

Mexico's central bank, which tracks money sent to the country by Mexicans living abroad, announced last month that these "remittances" had dropped by more than 18 percent in the past year, from $2.19 billion in April 2008 to $1.78 billion this April. It was the biggest such decline on record.