President Donald Trump’s administration has reduced the nation’s illegal alien population by 1.6 million in the last six months, likely through intense interior immigration enforcement, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reveals.
In an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, CIS researchers Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler found that between January and July, Trump has overseen an “unprecedented” 2.2 million-person decline in the nation’s total foreign-born population — 1.6 million of whom are illegal aliens.
“Analysis of the [Current Population Survey] data shows the total foreign-born population of all ages, both in and out of the labor force, declined an unprecedented 2.2 million from January to July – the largest six-month decline ever within the same year,” the researchers write.
Non-citizens accounted for all of the falloff in the total foreign-born; the naturalized U.S. citizen population has actually increased some since January. [Emphasis added]
We preliminarily estimate that the illegal immigrant population declined an astonishing 1.6 million (10 percent) to 14.2 million from January to July of this year. [Emphasis added]
The analysis comes as recent jobs data showed that all employment gains in recent months are going to native-born Americans rather than foreign-born workers.
“While employers may be unhappy with a decline in illegal immigrant workers, reducing the supply of labor is likely to be very helpful to less-educated U.S.-born and legal-immigrant workers, whose wages may rise as a result,” CIS researchers note:
Further, a tighter labor market and higher wages may help to draw back into jobs the near-record number of working-age American men without a college degree not in the labor force.