DREAM Act Offers Amnesty to 2.1 Million

New Estimate Shows Another 1.4 Million Family Members Could Also Stay

    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.
 
 
 
 
 

SOURCE Center for Immigration Studies