Is the recession causing a downturn in illegal immigration?

January 5, 2009 – 2:32 am – No Comment

When most illegal immigrants came to the United States, they were looking for work, and contractors and other people looking for cheap labor were more than willing to give it to them.

However, now there are too many homes on the market, and new home and commercial building has come to a crawl. Many undocumented workers are in construction so they are currently losing out.

I can’t find any recent numbers (since after the markets crashed in August) that distinguish between illegal and legal immigrants, but the numbers from April-June show that the unemployment rate for Latinos (both legal and non) was higher than it was for non-Latinos:

…the Hispanic jobless rate — immigrant and native-born alike — climbed to 6.5% in the first quarter of ’08 (non-Hispanics are at 4.7%). Compare that to late 2006, when Hispanic unemployment rates got closer than ever before to non-Hispanic rates, at 4.9% to 4.4%. Latinos have lost a lot of ground, particularly the immigrants among them. Their immigrant unemployment rate is 7.5% now; for those who have arrived since 2000, it’s 9.3%.The report doesn’t distinguish between illegal and legal immigrants, but it’s known that illegal workers are overrepresented in construction, the industry that has taken the the biggest lumps. Over 220,000 Hispanic immigrants lost construction jobs in the last year. -TIME; Jun 4, 2008

So, what does this mean for immigration? Well, it isn’t exactly headline news anymore and reports are showing that apprehension of illegals is decreasing; this may mean that there just aren’t as many to catch?