Unauthorized immigrant population: national and state trends, 2010

As of March 2010, 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States, virtually unchanged from a year earlier, according to new estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center. This stability in 2010 follows a two-year decline from the peak of 12 million in 2007 to 11.1 million in 2009 that was the first significant reversal in a two-decade pattern of growth. Unauthorized immigrants were 3.7 percent of the nation's population in 2010.

The number of children born to at least one unauthorized-immigrant parent in 2009 was 350,000 and they made up 8 percent of all U.S. births, essentially the same as a year earlier.

Although the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. is below 2007 levels, it has tripled since 1990, when it was 3.5 million and grown by a third since 2000, when it was 8.4 million.

Source: Pew Hispanic Center, “Unauthorized Immigrant Population: National and State Trends, 2010, February 2011.