Ramon Gonzalez Solares, of Ewing, sits inside an interview room at the Elizabeth Detention Center, where he had been detained for 6 weeks, in this August 2010 file photo. The illegal immigrant had been in the U.S. since 1985 working in a diner and as a landscaper. He was facing deportation to his native Guatemala.
The number of illegal immigrants in New Jersey has remained largely steady from 2007 to 2010, but a report released Tuesday shows it remains among the states with the highest percentages of undocumented immigrants overall.
An analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of recent U.S. Census figures shows about 6 percent of New Jersey's population is made up of illegal immigrants.
With an estimated 550,000 illegal immigrants, New Jersey ranks fifth among the states with the highest illegal immigrant populations, behind New York, Florida, Texas. California is the state with the highest illegal immigrant population.
New Jersey had about 600,000 illegal immigrants in 2007, according to the study, but the range of estimates is such that the decline is not enough to be statistically significant.
The Pew study also finds New Jersey third among the states with the largest share of illegal immigrants in the work force, behind Texas and California, with illegal immigrants constituting about 8.6 percent of the Garden State's work force. Immigrants represent a higher percentage of working age people than the general population, the study said.
Levels of illegal immigration nationally also remained largely the same. The study found the number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. in 2010 was roughly 11.2 million, a number virtually unchanged from 2009, when the level of illegal immigration declined for the first time in two decades.
More than 70 percent of the nation's foreign born are in this country legally, with illegal immigrants making up about 28 percent of the foreign born population, according to the study, which was based on the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey through March 2010.
Both immigrant advocates and those who favor stricter immigration controls said they were surprised at the findings, and said they thought immigrant communities in New Jersey had been growing at a faster pace.
"We have more people coming, and a bigger population because of more children born here," said Flor Gonzalez, who heads the Plainfield-based Latin American Coalition, a service center for immigrants.
"These immigrants are suffering more because of the lack of work, and they're more afraid now to go to the police and complain about crime, and domestic violence is going up," Gonzalez said.
Gayle Kesselman, co-chair of New Jersey Citizens for Immigration Control, said she thought the report would have shown more immigrants coming to New Jersey.
"I'm surprised there isn't more movement from states like Arizona that have stricter laws on immigration, coming to states like New Jersey which are more lax, and don't do anything about illegal immigration," she said.
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