Migration's New Numbers

This morning, The Washington Post had a cover story on updated census figures, based on the 2006 American Community Survey. Given the numbers-based discussion of immigration in Loudoun and Leesburg posted here two days ago, it is appropriate to revisit some of those conclusions and evaluate whether they still hold true under the new numbers.

The new data for Loudoun County returns the following relevant results:

2006
Total Population (Loudoun County) - 268,817
Foreign Born - 56,378 = 21% of Total Population
Born in Latin America - 15,882 = 6% of total population, or 28% of foreign-born population

This is significant because by definition, undocumented migrants must be foreign born, as anyone born in the U.S. is a citizen. It is also significant because there is evidence that many of the people who are perceived as immigrants are actually U.S. citizens.

Population 5 years and over (Loudoun County) - 244,514
Spanish spoken at home - 21,607 = 8.8% of Population over 5 years old

Thus, there are more people who speak Spanish at home in Loudoun County than there are residents who were born in Latin America. In fact, a significant percentage (up to 30%!) of the people who speak Spanish at home are U.S. citizens.

Furthermore, while the increase in Foreign Born residents in Loudoun county has been significant (from 11% to 21% since 2000), and the increase in languages other than English spoken at home has grown from 15% to 26% in that time, the increase has not been from a massive flow of undocumented Latin American migrants. Here is the proof:

- The undocumented migrants we care about come from the population of Loudoun County Residents born in Latin America. None of the proposals so far discussed in Loudoun have focused on Canadian tourists overstaying their visas. That is a population of 15,882 people, or 6% of the total County population

- Of that population, some percentage are naturalized U.S. citizens. For all foreign-born residents of Loudoun County, 48% are naturalized U.S. citizens. In fact, the percentage of foreign-born residents of the U.S. who are naturalized citizens has been rising consistently for more than a decade. And the largest population of naturalized citizens is from Latin America. To be conservative, we will assume that only 35% of Latin American-born residents are naturalized citizens. Thus, the population of non-citizen residents originally from Latin America is somewhere in the vicinity of 10,323, or 3.8% of the total County population.

- Of this new population, some percentage are here legally, though not citizens. These are people with visas and green cards. Some of them have overstayed their visa, but they did not break the law by entering the country, their visa has simply expired. The State Department estimates that 17% of non-immigrant visas went to people from Mexico, which means that some additional percentage of people from Mexico received immigrant visas ("Green Cards"). This does not even account for the percentage of visas and Green Cards that went to Latin American migrants from nations other than Mexico. To keep things conservative, however, let us assume that only 17% of the non-citizen resident population from Latin American population in Loudoun County has a valid visa or Green Card. That leaves approximately 8,568 people living in Loudoun County without the legitimate paperwork to do so. That is 3.2% of the total population of Loudoun County.

So the rate of undocumented migrants in Loudoun is actually higher than was mentioned two days ago, but the basic conclusion remains. Since the population of foreign-born residents of Loudoun County is now 21%, if our public servants checked all foreign-born residents for documentation status, they would be wasting their time over 80% of the time.

Loudoun County's tax dollars should not be spent on wasting time.