Illegal immigration is holding steady at about 11.1 million unauthorized people in the U.S. as of 2014, according to the latest numbers from the Pew Research Center Tuesday that signaled Mexicans continue to drop, while Central Americans and Indians make up a greater percentage.
About the same number of new illegal immigrants arrive each year as return home, die, or gain legal status — a trend that’s held steady since 2009, when the unauthorized population stood at 11.3 million.
And those illegal immigrants who are already here, usually living without fear of deportation, are becoming ever more deeply entrenched. Pew said the median length of time in the U.S. is now nearly 14 years, while just a decade before it was eight years.
That could make it even tougher for a future president to oust them, since they’ve put down deeper roots — the kind of situation that even GOP nominee Donald Trump has said could earn some form of legal status.
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