New studies examine Mexican immigration, unauthorized immigrants

More undocumented immigrants are having children in the United States and more Mexican immigrants are living in this country than the total number of immigrants in any other country, according to two new reports by the Pew Hispanic Center.

The children of undocumented immigrants are twice as likely to grow up in poverty and live with parents who could be deported at any moment, the Pew Hispanic Center concluded last week.

The Pew Hispanic Center is a non-partisan research organization that analyzes the demographics and influence of the Latino population in the United States.

About three-quarters of undocumented immigrants in the United States are Hispanic, and 32 percent of all immigrants in this country are from Mexico, the center said.

Pew concluded that the overall population of undocumented immigrants has remained steady for the past few years, increasing to 11.9 million in 2008 from 11.1 million in 2005. However, senior demographer Jeffrey S. Passel said the growing number of U.S. born children of undocumented immigrants might create a false perception that the population is continuing to grow rapidly. Passel added that immigration is a relatively new phenomenon in some areas of the country that are now experiencing a large influx of immigrants.

"People can perceive legal immigrants as undocumented, as well as their U.S. born relatives," he said.

Passel said that one of the most striking findings of the report was that most immigrants are part of families rather than single people who live alone or with roommates. In fact, undocumented immigrants are more likely than legal immigrants or U.S. citizens to live with spouses and children.

"This is a different picture than we usually see of undocumented immigrants," Passel said. "We usually see young men, day laborers. And while that is significant, only about a quarter (of undocumented immigrants) are men who are here by themselves without at spouse or children."

Passel said that because undocumented immigrants often live with spouses who are legal citizens or children who were born in the United States, these families have become increasingly difficult to categorize.

"While you may be able to fit people into boxes, it's not so easy to fit families," Passel said. "That complicates the task of creating policy."

In Cameron Park, Alma Rendon says she often provides undocumented immigrants with information and help at the Cameron Park Centro Cultural. Rendon says that consistent with the Pew study, many of the households in Cameron Park consist of a mixture of legal immigrants, undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens.

"We have a lot of homeowners who may have one or two children who are undocumented and the rest aren't," Rendon said.

Cameron Park is one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. However, Rendon says that children of undocumented immigrants aren't limited as much by poverty as they are by the precautions their undocumented parents take to avoid immigration authorities.

"I have a feeling that children (of undocumented immigrants) work harder in school. They strive to be better, to use their education to give them opportunities," Rendon said. "The real problem is that a lot of (undocumented) parents don't want to walk in the street. They're scared to be seen outside, so they don't want to go to the schools or even come to the community center for classes."

This prevents parents from getting involved in their children's' education in the public setting.

But for children of undocumented immigrants, a more significant threat looms: deportation of their parents.

"It was very hard to be undocumented and to parent my children," said Diana, a 50-year-old resident of Cameron Park who attended a class at the community center on Wednesday. Diana, who asked that her last name not be used in this article, burst out in tears as she recalled being deported to Mexico when her son was 11 years old. She did not see her son again for seven years, until she returned to the United States illegally.

""I came here to have my baby so he could be a citizen," Diana said. "Now he's 23. He has more opportunities here. But it was hard, yes - very hard."

Like many undocumented immigrants, Diana lives in a household with both undocumented children and her U.S. citizen son.

According to the Pew report, Diana is one of 1,400,000 undocumented immigrants living in Texas. This number has remained approximately the same since 2005. Between 1990 and 2000, the state's undocumented population shot up dramatically from about 450,000 to about 1,100,000.

Ltillman@brownsvilleherald.com