While those born in the US don’t need the DREAM Act to qualify for the benefits of citizenship, they face other challenges, such as the possibility of losing one or both parents.
“The Department of Homeland Security estimates that at least 100,000 children in 2009 saw at least one parent deported,” said Ajay Chaudry, senior fellow at the Urban Institute while moderating a forum there last week on children of undocumented workers.
Nearly four million children born in the United States have unauthorized immigrant parents. These four million child citizens represent about 80 percent of the 5.1 million children of undocumented parents. These 5.1 million children represent 7 percent of the child population of the United States and are responsible for much of the growth in the U.S. population, said demographer Jeffrey Passel, currently at the Pew Hispanic Center.
“In the absence of the immigrant child population, there would have been a net decline of the child population in the past decade,” said Passel, who was formerly at the Urban Institute and Census Bureau.
This group of children is growing faster than the children of legal citizens, which increased 42 percent from 3.6 million to 5.1 million since 2000.
The total number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. today is estimated to be 11 million, about 4 percent of the population. That is one million less than the 12 million estimated before the onset of the Great Recession that began in 2008. The vast majority of the undocumented are of Mexican origin.
Passel added that the U.S. population is aging. During the period 1980-2008, the median age increased from 30 to 37. The child population (defined as under 18) declined from 29 to 24 percent of the population. Consequently, these children of undocumented parents will play a vital role in the U.S. economy, especially now that the first of the baby-boomers, born in 1946, are due to retire beginning in 2011.
Stresses on Illegal Immigrants in Raising Citizens
Being in the US without legal status places parents in a difficult situation while raising their children. Ever under the threat of discovery and deportation, they may avoid social contacts and public programs that could benefit their children, according to Hiro Yoshikawa, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the author of Immigrants Raising Children (to be published in March 2011).
Yoshikawa did a longitudinal study of immigrant children born in New York City, where he compared immigrant Mexican, Chinese, and Dominican parents with African American parents, whom he used as a control group.
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