US Immigration Numbers Slump

Numbers of people moving to live and work in the US have slumped, this is being blamed on the recession and the unemployment currently being experienced by the US.

Apart from it being notoriously hard to enter the country to work legally, US immigration has said that government policy has no bearing on the new statistics.

Last month the US unemployment level was at the highest it has been for 26 years, with next month figures being touted as going above 100. Keeping the theme going it was also announced yesterday that the number of US banks that have closed this year also surpassed the 100 mark.

This is in contrast to America’s northern neighbor, Canada, which has seen a rise in immigration and expects the increase to continue. 150,000 people a year currently immigrate to Canada and in certain cities immigrants make up half of the population.

The US policy on immigration is totally different to that of Canada and as you would expect so are the numbers. What is interesting when you compare the both is that people in the US illegally is miles above that of Canada.

The statistics that immigration to America is declining is perhaps a little mis-leading when this is considered. The US have admitted that they themselves have no control over the problem, last week revealing that over half of the illegal immigrant population had entered the country by air and equal to that of people crossing the border illegally.

US immigration have said that tracing people that have over-stayed their tourist visas is neigh impossible and as such they can only guess that the people not returning are still in the country.

The US economy is in no doubt a lot of trouble and it is legal US citizens that have to bare the brunt of this. As companies across America have stopped hiring so to have the banks stopped lending. As if this was not enough the government plans to recoup the money they have spent out on bailing out the banks by increasing taxes.

With all this is mind I wouldn’t be surprised if the next news from US immigration is that numbers of people leaving the US has gone up. As it is certainly easier to leave America than it is to enter.