Is the Immigration Wave Ebbing?

By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

Blogger extraordinaire Mickey Kaus collects information that suggests that we are seeing a reversal of immigration, a gran salida of immigrants, surely many illegal, back to their countries of origin. Follow the links for the fascinating details. He sees a connection between tougher enforcement of immigration laws (including state laws) and the rejection of comprehensive immigration bills in 2006 and 2007 and an out-migration of immigrants. And a connection between that and the collapse of the housing bubble. All of this makes a lot of sense to me. We've seen a long trend of heavy Latino immigration, but trend lines don't go on forever. There's a break point somewhere. I'm going to be interested in seeing whether the Census Bureau's population estimates for June 30, 2008 (due out in December, I believe), show some concrete and significant evidence of this apparent trend. Here's a link to the relevant website.

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