WASHINGTON (AP):
IMMIGRATION - LEGAL and illegal - continues to boom as Congress grapples with how to better control United States borders.
A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies found that 7.9 million people moved to the United States in the past five years, which would make it the highest five-year period of immigration in U.S. history.
Mexico is the largest supplier of immigrants to the United States, followed by East Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, Central America and South America, according to the report.
The report, released yesterday, comes as the House of Representatives is set to start debating a bill to curb illegal immigration by boosting border security and requiring workplace enforcement of immigration laws.
There are 35.2 million foreign-born people living in the United States, according to the report, which is based on figures from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey from March. Estimates of the number of people in the country illegally range from about nine million to 11 million.
"The 35.2 million immigrants living in the country in March 2005 is the highest number ever recorded - two-and-a-half times the 13.5 million during the peak of the last great immigration wave in 1910," said the report, authored by Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies.
About 12.1 per cent of the current U.S. population was born in another country, the highest percentage since 1920, according to census figures.
