In five years of social outreach at Our Lady Queen of Angels church in Los Angeles, Guillermo Armenta has always seen more parishioners stream into this historic haven for illegal immigrants than leave. Until now.
In the last few months, he said, nearly a dozen parishioners have told them they plan to return to their homelands because jobs in construction, restaurants and the janitorial trade have dried up here. Others say they are discouraging their relatives from coming here because of the economic slowdown and workplace immigration raids that have snared scores of unauthorized workers.
"This is the first time I've seen people returning instead of coming," Armenta said.
A study released Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center has documented a change in trend: After years of rapid growth, illegal immigration is slowing down in California, with the state's share of the nation's estimated 11.9 million undocumented migrants dropping to 22% from 42% in 1990, the study showed.
The state still has the largest concentration of illegal immigrants in the nation, with 2.7 million -- a figure that has nearly doubled since 1990.
But, in a trend that began with California's recession in the 1990s, more migrants are bypassing the state for other areas of the country. The number of illegal immigrants outside the nation's six traditional "first stop" states of California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey and New York has increased sevenfold, to nearly 5 million in 2008 from 700,000 in 1990, according to Jeffrey S. Passel, the study's coauthor and a Pew Center senior demographer.
The study, based on March 2008 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, comes amid renewed momentum for a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would include a legalization program for undocumented migrants. President Obama is expected to make a speech on immigration reform next month and launch public forums about the issue during the summer. Meanwhile, the nation's leading labor groups have reached a compromise about a guest worker program.
Passel said one of the study's most striking findings was the number of young families among the illegal immigrant population. Nearly half of the households headed by undocumented immigrants have young children, twice the rate of native-born households. And nearly three-fourths of their children were U.S.-born citizens.
The children of undocumented immigrants make up about 10% of California students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
