free software writes " The number of Filipinos overstaying in the United States
appears to be slowing down.
The Philippines, which ranked as the fourth leading source of illegal immigrants in 2000 after Mexico, El
Salvador and Guatemala, has dropped to seventh place at the start of this year, according to US statistics.
From 200,000 five years ago, about
215,000 undocumented Filipino immigrants, commonly referred to as TNTs (the
Filipino acronym for “tago ng tago” or constantly in hiding), were estimated to
be living in the US
as of Jan. 1, 2006, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration
Statistics said in a report recently.
They made up two percent of an estimated
11 million illegal immigrants in the US at the start of 2006.
About 3.1 million of all unauthorized
residents had come to live in the US in 2000 or later. One million
entered the US
in 2003 or 2004, while 2.1 million arrived during 2000 through 2002, the office
said.
Mexicans made up more than half of the
illegal aliens as of the start of this year at nearly six million, followed by
Salvadorans (470,000), Guatemalans (370,000), Indians (280,000) and Chinese
(230,000).
The office estimated there were 210,000
undocumented Filipinos in January 2005 and that the number grew at a slow rate
of two percent a year.
There were also an estimated 210,000
illegal Koreans in January 2005, but their six percent average growth rate a
year placed them ahead of the Filipinos in the overall rankings.
The report said illegal aliens were
primarily attracted to California which drew
in 2.8 million of them, Texas (1.4 million), Florida (850,000), New York
(560,000), Illinois (520,000), Arizona (480,000), Georgia (470,000), New
Jersey (380,000), North Carolina
(360,000) and Nevada
(240,000).
The report said estimating the size of
illegal aliens living in the US
was challenging because of data limitations.
Unauthorized immigrant population must be
estimated by making certain assumptions and by combining data that measure
events with those that measure populations, it said.
The US census of 2000 estimated there
were about 1.9 million Filipinos living in the country, 32 percent of them US
citizens by birth, 41 percent naturalized US citizens, and 26 percent permanent
residents, or so-called green card holders.
Latest estimates put this number at
between 2.1 million and 2.3 million.
By Jose Katigbak
"
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