Arrivals down, panic up

Reason, May, 2008 by Kerry Howley

A new report from the Immigration Policy Center reminds us that immigrant arrivals have been down since well before the current eruption of nativist sentiment. The annual flow of immigrants to the United States was at its height in 2000. The Census Bureau and Social Security Administration predict it will continue to decline until at least 2015.

According to the study's author, University of Southern California demographer Dowell Myers, "proponents of the negative story of the immigrant future have ignored this recent leveling and decline. Instead, they have averaged data from the last 12 to 14 years and concluded that immigration is continuing at record levels." Myers notes that the flow to gateway states like California is way down. Immigrants are instead heading straight to places such as Missouri and the Carolinas, where they're finding jobs and forming small communities.