DREAM Act Offers Amnesty to 2.1 Million

PR Newswire
Posted: 2007-10-23 19:19:39

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Senate is currently
considering the DREAM Act (S.2205). Some have argued that only 60,000
illegal immigrants would be granted amnesty annually under the Act, but a
new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies of 2007 Census Bureau
data shows millions of potential beneficiaries.

-- An estimated 800,000 illegal immigrants under age 17 have been
here long enough to qualify for legalization under the DREAM
Act. There are a total of 1.7 million illegal aliens estimated
to be under age 17.

-- There are an estimated 900,000 parents of illegal aliens under
age 17 who qualify. It is unclear whether the government would
deport these parents.

-- The DREAM Act is also unclear as to what will happen to the
siblings of legalized illegals who are themselves illegal,
but do not meet the Act's requirements. There are an estimated
500,000 of these siblings.

-- The DREAM Act also allows illegal aliens ages 18 to 29 to legalize
if they claim to have arrived prior to age 16. We estimate 1.3 million
meet this requirement. There are a total of 4.4 million illegal
aliens in this age group.

-- Thus the total number of potential amnesty beneficiaries is 2.1 million
(assuming no fraud). This does not include 1.4 million siblings and
parents of qualifying illegals who may end up receiving a de facto
amnesty.

-- Prior legalization programs have been plagued by fraud. One-fourth
(700,000) of those legalized in the 1986 amnesty are estimated to
have done so fraudulently.

-- Given the difficultly in determining whether an applicant meets the
DREAM Act's amnesty requirements, coupled with the overworked nature
of the immigration bureaucracy, fraud could be a significant problem.

Methodology: These estimates are based on a Center for Immigration
Studies analysis of the March 2007 Current Population Survey (CPS)
collected by the Census Bureau. No estimate is definitive, of course, but
the Urban Institute, the Pew Hispanic Center, and the INS have all used the
March CPS to estimate the size of the illegal population. We estimated that
the survey included more than 11 million illegals in 2007. This is entirely
consistent with prior research. The above numbers do NOT include those
illegal aliens missed by the Census Bureau's survey. The Department of
Homeland Security and other researchers have estimated that 10 percent of
illegals are likely missed in Census Bureau surveys of this kind. Thus, the
actual number of potential beneficiaries is almost certainly higher than
the numbers discussed above.

We use the demographic characteristics of respondents to distinguish
legal and illegal immigrants in the survey. We combine this with the
estimated number of legal immigrants in the country. This method is based
on some very well-established facts about the characteristics of the legal
and illegal population and is consistent with other research that employs
the same approach to estimate the illegal population.

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institute
which examines the impact of immigration on the United States.