New report: Georgia 7th among states for illegal immigrants

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By Jeremy Redmon

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Just a few days before state lawmakers are scheduled to hold their first hearing on tough Arizona-style legislation, a new report says Georgia has about 425,000 illegal immigrants living here.

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Deputy P. Brown performs a body search at the Gwinnett County Jail. The tax-payer funded 287(g) federal program empowers local officials to enforce federal immigration laws.

Vino Wong, vwong@ajc.com Deputy P. Brown performs a body search at the Gwinnett County Jail. The tax-payer funded 287(g) federal program empowers local officials to enforce federal immigration laws.

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Georgia has the ninth-largest population among states, but it is home to the seventh-largest number of illegal immigrants, according to a Pew Hispanic Center report released Tuesday.

That estimate -- which is as of March 2010 -- is unchanged from the center’s 2009 estimate, though it is down from 475,000 in 2007. Georgia now ranks ahead of Arizona, but it falls behind California -- which ranks first -- Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois.

In Georgia, Republican Rep. Matt Ramsey’s bill would punish people who encourage illegal immigrants to enter the state and punish people who transport and conceal them when they get here. Lawmakers are set to start discussing HB 87 at 9:30 a.m. Friday in the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee.

Supporters say the state needs to take action because illegal immigrants are sapping taxpayer-funded resources and taking jobs amid high unemployment.

“People are always surprised when I tell them that we have more illegal aliens in Georgia than they do in Arizona,” Ramsey said Tuesday, “underscoring that we do have a significant problem in Georgia that does significantly bear on our state and local government resources.”

Critics say the legislation could hurt Georgia’s economy, particularly its $65 billion agricultural industry, which relies heavily on migrant workers.

“It is not going to affect just whoever they think they are going to target, but it is also going to affect the economy in different levels all over the state,” said Adelina Nicholls, executive director of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, an immigrant rights group that opposes Ramsey's bill.

Meanwhile, the nation’s population of “unauthorized immigrants” has stopped shrinking, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington-based nonpartisan research organization that uses U.S. census data for its estimates. The center’s national estimate of 11.2 million for 2010 is roughly the same as it was for 2009, marking some stability after a two-year decline from a high of 12 million in 2007.

The decline happened mainly because of a drop in the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico, according to the report. Last year, an estimated 6.5 million illegal immigrants from Mexico were in the United States, which is down from 7 million in 2007.

The recession and increased enforcement of immigration laws could be affecting these numbers, the report says. Deportations have more than doubled over the past decade, reaching almost 400,000 in fiscal year 2009. Most deportees are Mexicans.

The Pew Hispanic Center defines “unauthorized immigrants” as those who have entered the country illegally, arrived legally but overstayed their visas, or otherwise violated the terms of their entry to the United States. However, some of these people may have obtained authorization to work in the United States by applying for an adjustment of their status.

Also among the report's findings:

• Georgia ranks sixth among states in terms of how many illegal immigrants are working here: 325,000, or 7 percent of the state’s labor force, the report says. The national count is 8 million. State lawmakers are considering a few bills aimed at preventing employers from hiring illegal immigrants in Georgia.

• The number of illegal immigrants in Colorado, Florida, New York and Virginia has declined significantly since 2007. During the same time frame, the combined population of illegal immigrants for Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas has gone up by 240,000.

• The number of children born to at least one illegal immigrant was 350,000 from March 2009 to March 2010, which is statistically similar to the 2008-2009 time frame.

Two congressmen from Georgia -- Republicans Phil Gingrey of Marietta and Rob Woodall of Lawrenceville-- are co-sponsoring House Resolution 140 to deny automatic birthright citizenship to the American-born children of illegal immigrants. The bill would require that a child born here also have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or national; a legal resident; or "an alien performing active service in the armed forces" in order to be considered a citizen.

“We need to enforce our laws,” Gingrey said Tuesday in a phone interview from New Mexico, where he was observing the federal government’s efforts to seal the border. “This problem is not just along the southern border.”