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© St. Petersburg Times, published October 28, 2001
WASHINGTON -- Roughly 8-million illegal immigrants live in the United States, early estimates from the 2000 census show, swelling the country's total foreign-born population to more than 31-million people.
More detailed figures are due from the Census Bureau in the next month, and a final count of the foreign born population will be released next year.
If the estimates hold up, the numbers would be new highs, immigration experts said.
The figures are in line with estimates from other census surveys released earlier this year.
The 1990 head count found 19.7-million foreign-born Americans. Several government agencies have placed the number of undocumented immigrants that year at about 3.5-million.
The Census Bureau does not ask about citizenship status on its forms and stresses that it keeps all answers confidential. The bureau uses data from the Immigration and Naturalization Service to help get estimates on undocumented Americans.
The latest estimates come at a time when Congress is scrutinizing the nation's immigration and visa systems after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Federal immigration officials have said that 13 of the 19 hijackers were in the country on legal visas.
No records have been found to indicate how the other six got into the country.
Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, have said they plan to introduce legislation that, among other things, would require INS to track foreign students undergoing such vocational training as flight and language study.
"These new estimates have enormous implications for the security of our nation," said Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors stricter immigration controls.
While the vast majority of illegal immigrants are not terrorists, "the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are able to settle in the United States illegally each year indicates that terrorists who wish to do so face few obstacles," he said.