Thursday, October 26, 2006

Study says 272,000 illegal immigrants live in San Diego, Imperial, and Riverside counties

That's it? I'd have figured it'd be a lot more than that.

NORTH COUNTY -- According to a new study, an estimated 272,000 illegal immigrants are living in San Diego, Imperial and southern Riverside counties, a figure that translates to nearly 7 percent of the region's 4 million residents.

While the percentage of illegal immigrants remained in the single digits, their numbers are rising rapidly, according to the study.

The number of illegal immigrants living in San Diego and Imperial counties rose 38 percent; in southern Riverside County, the number rose 18 percent between 2000 and 2005, according to the study commissioned by the American Immigration Law Foundation, a nonprofit in Washington that supports legal immigration.


Those percentage in population increase sound right, but only 272,000 in those 3 counties? Imperial and Riverside counties are HUGE (over 16,000 square miles of SoCal) and some of the fastest growing areas as far as building expansion. And with San Diego and Imperial counties actually bordering Mexico, 272,000 illegal immigrants must be an extremely conservative estimate.

The numbers are based on this study breaking down illegals per Congressional District. The methodology is at the bottom and says that they relied heavily on US Census Bureau stats.

So basically it's a huge underestimation.

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