Two Lakh Illegal Indian Immigrants Living in US: Report
A recent official report on illegal residents for the year 2009 has claimed that nearly two lakh Indians are illegally living in the US, said media reports.
In the 2008, this figure was 160,000 illegal Indian residents and there has been a jump of nearly 40,000 since.
It should be noted this jump in illegal Indian residents comes at a time when the number of illegal foreign residents in the US has gone down from 11.6 million in January 2008 to 10.8 million in January 2009, said reports.
“Between 2000 and 2007, the unauthorised population grew by 3.3 million from 8.5 million to 11.8 million,” said the report Estimates of the Unauthorised Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2009 released by the Department of Homeland Security yesterday.
“The number of unauthorised residents declined by 1.0 million between 2007 and 2009, coincident with the US economic downturn. The overall annual average increase in the unauthorised population during the 2000-2009 period was 250,000,” the report said.
According to report, Mexico with 6.7 million (62 per cent) continued to be the leading source of unauthorised immigration to the US.
The next leading source countries for unauthorized immigrants in 2009 were El Salvador (530,000), Guatemala (480,000), Honduras (320,000), the Philippines (270,000) and India (200,000), the report said.
