Unauthorized Immigrants, Trends, and Characteristics: Comparison of Estimates Based in the CPS and ACS

• Activity Number: 67
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, July 29, 2012 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
• Sponsor: Social Statistics Section
• Author(s): Jeffrey Passel*+
• Companies: Pew Hispanic Center
• Keywords: immigration ; undocumented ; unauthorized ; illegal ; residual estimates

Abstract

This paper presents the latest estimates of the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States from the American Community Survey (2010) and the Current Population Survey (2011), population trends using consistently-estimated data, and information on selected socio- demographic characteristics of the group. Residual methods have been used to estimate the size of the unauthorized immigrant population in the US since the early 1980s based on comparisons with data from decennial censuses (1980-2000), the CPS (1995-), and the ACS (2005-).

Edit-imputation methods developed by Clark and Passel at the Urban Institute in the late 1990s combine the residual estimates, respondent characteristics from the survey, and additional survey information to assign legal status to individual survey respondents. This paper describes the methods, assumptions required for implementation, and limitations of the estimates. Changes over time in characteristics of unauthorized immigrants are described in the context of broader immigration trends with particular attention to the interaction of methods, assumptions, and data sources to focus on "real" changes versus methodological features.