"This is a different picture than we usually see of undocumented immigrants," Passel said in a teleconference. "We usually see the young men, day laborers on the corners."
Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said the slowdown in illegal immigration was welcome news -- but not for the right reasons.
"It's slowing down because the economy has tanked, not because the state is doing much to stop it," he said. "What you'd like to see is illegal immigration decline because we have rational policies in place that make it clear to people that you're not going to benefit by coming to the U.S. or California illegally."
But people such as Jorge-Mario Cabrera, an El Salvador native and immigration activist, said he was sending both messages to relatives to dissuade them from coming here.
"The message to family members is think twice before coming here," said Cabrera, a spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. "Not only will you find a dearth of job opportunities, you will also find an environment that is very anti-immigrant, with raids and deportations."
The study, co-written by D'Vera Cohn, a Pew Research Center senior writer, found that three-quarters of illegal immigrants are Latino, mostly from Mexico. On average, they tend to work in low-skilled jobs such as farming and construction, earn markedly less than the median national income and have lower educational levels than U.S.-born residents.
For instance, 47% of illegal immigrant adults ages 25-64 have less than a high school education compared with 8% for U.S.-born residents. The immigrants' 2007 median household income was $36,000, compared with $50,000 for the U.S.-born, and they did not attain markedly higher incomes the longer they lived in the United States, unlike legal immigrants, the study found.
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teresa.watanabe@latimes.com
