NPG's position is that total immigration, which now adds at least 1.3 million to the US population each year, must be reduced by at least 80 percent if population growth is to end and then recede over time to a long-term sustainable level of 150 million Americans. The most practical place to start is by strictly enforcing the laws already on the books against illegal entry and residence with the aim of reducing net annual US growth from illegal immigration and births to illegal residents from some three-quarters of a million yearly to near zero¹.

NPG has conservatively estimated the current illegal alien population at between ten million and fifteen million. In October 2007 at a Washington press conference, however, Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS - a nonprofit public interest organization) released reports from four of its experts variously estimating that 18 million to 38 million illegal aliens may now be in the US, with the permanent stock of illegals estimated as increasing yearly at between 1.3 million and 4.0 million.

A fifth presenter at the press conference concentrated on the increased fiscal costs to California from illegal immigration, based on the following low, medium and high estimates of that state?s illegal population: a range of 2.47 million to 4.8 million, with a median figure of 2.8 million - up from 1.7 million in 1994. The 4.8 million "high" estimate, based on California's assumed 24% share of the overall illegal population, implies a national illegal population of 20 million.

Some media coverage (e.g. Houston Chronicle, Philadelphia Bulletin and Cox News Service) suggested that CAPS' research findings are "scare tactics" to mobilize more opposition to illegal immigration and that they are not supported by other independent research. The reference to "scare tactics" is ironic, since many observers of the country's rapid population growth, including the CAPS studies' authors, suspect the Census Bureau of just the opposite - using "lulling tactics" to allay public alarm with chronic underestimates of illegal immigration and its ballooning effects on population.

While the range of estimates in the CAPS reports are all higher than those of NPG (which in turn have been generally higher than the 2006 estimates of the Department of Homeland Security of 11 million to 12 million), they hardly represent fringe thinking. The reports parallel and partake of increasing findings from other expert sources, such as Time Magazine² , Bear Stearns Investments³ , the Border Patrol Union Local in Tucson, AZ⁴ , and well placed U.S. legislators, such as Senator John Glenn and Representative Jim Kolbe, and other federal officials.

Here is a summary of the individual reports and their conclusions⁵

Introductory Statement of CAPS President Diana Hull: Ascertaining the true scale of US population growth and the size of the illegal alien population is vital to the country's future - a need lost on Congress in its debates of legalization. The Census Bureau and the Demographic Unit of the California Department of Finance (DOF) have underestimated or obscured the extent of population growth from immigration, particularly illegal immigration.

As an example, DOF in 2006 showed a million more people in California than Census did. DOF claimed until 2004 that half of the state's growth was natural increase and half was migration from other states or from abroad. But a closer demographic analysis by CAPS revealed that immigration and births to immigrants - innocuously subsumed under "natural increase" - accounted for 100 percent of the state's growth between 1900 and 2002. Interstate migration produced a net outflow of 200,000 per year.

This led CAPS to seriously question official Census and DOF figures. Instead of the 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens these agencies claim, there may actually be 20 million to 30 million or more. Although each of the following reports was prepared independently, the estimates of the researchers are similar in finding an illegal alien population that is twice or more as large as that estimated by government agencies.

Report of James H. Walsh, former Associate General Counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service on Counting the Uncountable: No exact head count exists for the population of illegal aliens. While none of the government's experts knows the exact number, they craft estimates to fit their own agenda. The report discusses particular instances of official "capping" of numbers of apprehensions and deportations to create a public perception of border control.

This report's estimate of as many as 38 million illegal aliens in the US is based in large part on conservative border patrol estimates that three aliens enter the country successfully for each one apprehended (some border patrol estimates run as a high as seven entries for each apprehension). Over the ten-year period of 1996 to 2005 total apprehensions averaged 1.2 million yearly. Applying the three-to-one multiplier yields an estimated average of 3.6 million successful EWIs ("Entries without Inspection" in Border Patrol parlance) yearly yields 36 million for the decade. Adjustments are made, but not detailed in this report, for decreases in the illegal alien population from death or emigration.

An estimated two million additional illegal visa overstayers are added to make the final total estimate 38 million. It is not clear from the report whether this final total includes the illegal alien population already living in the US before the decade beginning in 1996 (a number then estimated by INS at 5-6 million) .⁶

Report of Demographer and Consultant Nancy Bolton on The Challenges of Accurately Estimating the Population of Illegal Immigrants (Presented for Her at the Press Conference in Her Absence): Bolton reviews the weakness of Census data, principally its dependence of self-reporting, for estimating a population that prefers to remain invisible. The final rate of return of census questionnaires from households has fallen from 87 percent in 1970 to 78.4 percent in 2000. Although non-returns are followed up by Census bureau efforts to contact the non-compliant household by phone or in person, some 1.5 million of the nation's 106 million occupied housing units, or 1.4 percent, never yielded a contact in 2000. Undercounts are common, and Census deals with them by either:

a) Demographic analysis to estimate undercount rates, which depends in part on tenuous international migration records; or
b) Post-enumeration surveys, in which Census picks a sample of units to be resurveyed. This remedial tactic has the same weakness of depending on householders to respond and to accurately disclose household membership. Information obtained in follow-up interviews tends to be more inconsistent than information voluntarily supplied in mail-back responses.

Considering whether Census estimates of illegals are too low, Bolton notes that the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the American Community Survey (ACS) have shown an upsurge in illegal immigrants, mirroring a similar though more robust trend found in the 2005 Bear Sterns report.⁷ Bear Sterns concluded that the actual illegal population could reach 20 million, based on indicators such as;

a) A 200 percent increase in remittances of foreign workers between 1995 and 2003;
b) Rising housing permits and school enrollments in immigrant gateway communities disproportionate to official population counts; and
c) The broad gap between media estimates on one hand of the success ratio of illegal entry attempts (three-to-one)⁸ , and Census estimates on the other hand implying that only one-in-three attempts at EWI succeeds. Even if the assumption is that only one person succeeds for every apprehension, Bolton notes, it still adds up to one million EWIs a year.

Regarding visa overstayers, an Australian government study shows that 6.9 percent of those admitted on temporary visas overstay for a year or more. The US admits about 30 million temporary visa holders yearly. If its overstay rate were only one percent, 300,000 more illegal aliens would join the resident population each year.

Bolton concludes that there was a 25 percent undercount of illegals in the 2000 census. Assuming a growth of the illegal population of 1.3 million yearly from 2000 to 2005, there would have been about 18 million illegal immigrants present in 2005. That is far closer to the Bear Sterns estimate of 20 million in 2005 than to the CPS-based estimates of 11 to 12 million.

Report of Fred Elbel, Colorado Computer and Data Analysis Professional and Sierra Club Activist on An Alternate Methodology for Discovering the Numbers - This estimate of total illegal residents begins with estimates of the total number entering and evading apprehension each year. This raw figure is adjusted to account for repeat apprehensions of individuals, short terms stays, deaths, legalizations and emigration from the US. Elbel applies this methodology to three base years: 2001, 2002 and 2004. The year 2004 saw a sharp upturn in apprehensions and, presumably, successful entries because of the magnet effect of Washington's initial discussion of immigration reform, including an amnesty and a guest worker program.

For each of those years, two different assumptions are made for apprehension rates: a) three successful EWIs for each apprehension (the Border Patrol's consensus rate), and b) seven successful entries for each apprehension (Border Patrol's high estimate). Table 1 shows the author's range of estimated illegal entries after factoring out short stays, emigration and deaths, legalizations, and multiple apprehensions of the same person.

Table 1

(Millions of illegal aliens per year)

Apprehension Rate	2001	2002	2004	Average
1 out of 4	2.5	1.5	2.7	2.2
1 out of 7	5.8	3.3	6.2	5.1

Elbel concludes that average annual entries are now in the range of three to four million a year (which would be the mid-zone between the two average annual entry figures posited in column 4 above.) Some 70 percent of those entrants would be Mexican nationals, though the share of entries by "other-than-Mexican" is growing. With these flows, and with an estimated 2.3 million visa overstayers already in the country, it is likely that up to 20 million illegal aliens reside in the US.

Report of Philip J. Romero, Former Aide to California Governor Pete Wilson on "The Fiscal Impact of Illegal Immigration in California Revisited" In 1994 the author was one of a team of aides to Governor Wilson that prepared a report on the fiscal costs of illegal immigrants in California.⁹ The state's illegal alien population estimated for the 1994 study was 1.7 million. The updated study for 2005 uses the following range of estimates of California's illegal population: Low, 2.47 million; median 2.8 million; high, 4.8 million.

The median population used here is taken from a report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform on alien costs to California.¹⁰ The low basis population is the 10.3 million estimated by the Pew Hispanic Center in 2006;¹¹ the high is the 20 million population estimated by Bear Sterns. Both the low and the high estimate assume California's illegal population is 24 percent of the national illegal population (Note: If he had used the 38 million strong illegal population estimated by James Walsh (above) and assumed the state was home to 24 percent of all illegals in the US, his high estimate would have been a remarkable, but not impossible, 9 million in California.)

His population estimates highlight the growth of the illegal population since 1994-from 1.7 million to 4.8 million. The costs to California's treasury have mounted with that growth. The study concludes that the net fiscal deficit in 2005 per illegal immigrant ranged from a median figure of $7600 to a high of almost $8000. When multiplied by the estimates of illegal population, this total of $21 billion represented nearly 22 percent of the state's total budget of $97 billion in 2004.

What the Findings Mean for Population Stability and Ultimate Reduction. While these estimates are extremely wide ranging, even those in the lower, most plausible range of 18 to 20 million illegal aliens have serious implications for future population growth and becloud the prospects for early population stability. One undisguised factor is the high fertility of illegal aliens and the resulting high numbers of US citizen children, which are not counted in these studies in the overall growth of the numbers. Another is that larger illegal alien populations are likely to generate relatively larger number of annual legalizations even in the absence of a general amnesty. More legalizations boost downstream legal immigration by stimulating more petitions for family reunification visas.

Table 2 demonstrates the swelling effect on overall US population implied by the Various CAPS estimates and US citizen children.

Table 2

Author of CAPS Estimates	High Estimate of Illegal Alien Population	CPS estimate of Total Immigrant pop. (05) 36.3 million; (11.5 million illegal)	Implied Size of US Citizen Children Pop Under CAPS estimates (CPS Est. 3.2 million)	Implied Size of Total US Population - 300 million in 2006
Walsh	38 mil	63 mil	10.6 mil	334 mil
Bolton	18 mil	43 mil	5.0 mil	308.3.mil
Elbel	20 mil	45 mil	5.6 mil	311 mil
Romero	20 mil	45 mil	5.6 mil	311 mil

High illegal immigration states, under these estimates, also show marked increases in their numbers of illegal aliens and US citizen children, costly high-dependency populations. Table 3 shows the population gains to California, Texas, Florida and New York, the four states receiving 52 percent of all illegal immigrants to the US.

Table 3

CAPS Estimates By Author	High Est. of National Illegal Pop. (+ Citizen Children)	Implied Pop. California (Illegals + Citizen Children) @ 24.6%	Implied Pop. Texas (Illegals + Citizen Children) @14.2%	Implied Pop. Florida (Illegals + Citizen Children) @8.5%	Implied Pop. New York (Illegals + Citizen Children) @4.7%
Walsh	48.6 mil	11.9 mil	6.9 mil	4.1 mil	2.3 mil
Bolton	23 mil	5.6 mil	3.3 mil	2.0 mil	1.1 mil
Elbel	25.6 mil	6.3 mil	3.6 mil	2.2 mil	1.2 mil
Romero	25.6 mil	6.3 mil	3.6 mil	2.2 mil	1.2 mil

*Percentages Computed from state shares in: Dept. of Homeland Security,Office of Immigration Statistics: Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2006

A significantly larger illegal population, despite the spottily enforced ban on their voting, has greater clout in agitating for mass legalizations. Their network of sympathetic citizen relatives, friends and ambitious politicians expands with greater numbers. In determining their positions, US legislators at all levels rarely show a lot of concern whether the letters, appeals and contributions they receive on amnesties come from legal or illegal aliens. Finally, greater numbers will mean more clout in campaigns in pro-immigrant local jurisdictions to permit voting by illegal aliens.

For those concerned about the population effects, there can be no illusion that amnesties merely change millions from one bureaucratic category to another and stimulate future immigration without advancing the long-term goal of a smaller population for the USA. The table demonstrates the swelling effect on overall US population implied by the Various CAPS estimates and US citizen children.



^1. David Simcox, Toward Negative Population Growth: Cutting Legal Immigration by Four-Fifths, Negative Population Growth, Inc. June 2006; and Zero Tolerance for Illegal Immigration: An Urgent Policy Need, Negative Population Growth, Inc. May 2006
^2. Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele, "Who Left the Door Open?," Time Magazine, September 20, 2004
^3. Robert Justich and Betty Ng, The Underground Labor Force is Rising to the Surface, Bear Sterns Asset Management, January 3, 2005
^4. Border Patrol local 2544, covering most of Arizona, stated on its website (www.local2544.org) in July 2005 that by many estimates there were 15 to 20 million illegal aliens in the US, with the number increasing everyday because of insecure borders. See also: Christian Science Monitor, May 16, 2006
^5. The full reports appear in "How Many Illegal Aliens are In the US?", The Social Contract, Summer 2007 and at www.thesocialcontract.com
^6. Robert Warren Estimates of the Undocumented Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: October 1996. Office of Policy and Planning, US Immigration and Naturalization Service
^7. Justich and Betty Ng. cited above.
^8. Time magazine, September, 2004. Cited above.
^9. Romero, Chang and Parker, Shifting the Cost of a Failed Federal Promise: The Net Fiscal Impact of Illegal Immigrants on California, California Office of Planning and Research, Sept. 1994
^10. Jack Martin and Ira Mehlman, The Costs of Illegal Immigrants to California, Federation for American Immigration Reform, November 2004.
^11. Jeffrey S. Passell, The Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the US: Estimates Based on the March 2005 Current Population Survey, Pew Hispanic Center, March 7, 2006