Raw Data: Illegal Immigration Continues to Decline

Every year the Pew Research Center releases an annual report on the flow of unauthorized immigrants into the US. A while back—and I apologize for being fuzzy on the details—immigration hawks were all yammering about how 2016 was the year. Based on their read of Census data, 2016 was the year that Pew would finally show an increase in the population of unauthorized immigrants after nearly a decade of decline. But no. According to Pew, at least, it’s still declining:

The full report is here. We now have a full decade of decline following the peak year of 2007. This is why Donald Trump is so hellbent on inciting clashes wherever he can. Without that, there’s just no way to keep his base outraged over the horde of Mexicans invading our borders. After all, Trump’s supporters can read. After a while, even they’ve heard the numbers often enough to figure out that there’s really nothing much to be outraged about here.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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