Border Patrol funding has grown more than 500 percent over the last two decades, as the number of enforcement personnel at the border has skyrocketed and new border infrastructure (traditional and high-tech) has been installed. Yet the population of unauthorized immigrants in the United States has roughly tripled during the same period, raising fundamental questions about the costs and benefits of increased border security.

The Migration Policy Institute is hosting a team of researchers from the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California - San Diego for a briefing on their recent research, which suggests there should be a reexamination of the current enforcement strategy. The flow of new unauthorized migrants from Mexico has slowed recently, but the Center's research finds that the decision to forego or postpone migration is not driven by increased border or interior enforcement, but rather by the lack of work in the United States. And the Center's researchers find no evidence that interior enforcement has produced a significant rise in return migration or that employers of unauthorized workers have changed their hiring practices.

These findings raise important questions about how illegal immigration will be affected by an economic recovery in the United States or a deepening recession in Mexico.

If you have any questions, please contact Lisa Dixon via email at events@migrationpolicy.org or by phone at (202) 266-1929.

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