Did the immigrant population really drop?

The immigrant population in the U.S. dropped in 2008 according to figures released by the Census Bureau though there’s more than meets the eye.

The annual American Community Survey (ACS) concluded that the number of foreign-born residents in the U.S. fell by an estimated 99,000 (approximately 0.3%). The largest foreign-born decline was among Mexican immigrants with a drop by about 300,000 to 11.4 million. The overall Latino population decreased nationwide except the Northeast were it stayed about the same.

The drop in immigrant population has been blamed by some on the recession since those states with the largest declines where also those hardest hit by the economic downturn. Others point the finger at stronger enforcement of immigration laws.

Yet details of the ACS show that percentage of foreign-born (12.5%) is still “close to the peak reached during the last massive wave of immigration between the 1880s and 1920s.” Furthermore, it’s unknown exactly how the economy has affected immigrant populations in decades past since the Census bureau used to measure that every ten years. Lastly, the methodology behind the ACS may indicate that the foreign-born may not have declined at all:

The data come from the Census Bureau's annual survey of about 3 million Americans, not the entire population. The survey's margin of sampling error is high enough to make it possible that the number of foreign-born people in the country actually remained unchanged from 2007 to 2008 rather than declined.

Image- USA TODAY (“An ICE agent searches a man at a meat plant in Greeley, Colo., during a 2006 raid.”)
Online Sources- USA TODAY, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, AP