According to a representative of ICE, last year, 2,196 businesses were audited, up from 1,444 in 2009. While the administration of George W. Bush focused on headline-making raids that resulted in arrests of immigrant workers, the Obama administration has gone after employers with ICE’s I-9 audits on the theory that employers who hire unauthorized workers create the demand that drives most illegal immigration. In addition, the Social Security Administration has resumed sending “no-match” letters after a three-year hiatus. The letters, which alert employers that information on an employee’s W-2 form does not match information on file with the Social Security Administration, had been halted in 2007. [New York Times]
This week, 15 famished but otherwise healthy Mexican immigrants were rescued from Southern California’s Santa Cruz island after using a cellphone to alert authorities that they were abandoned by smugglers. In the last few months, there has been an average of about two or three smuggling operations a week discovered from Orange County north, immigration officials said. [LATimes]
The latest 2010 Census data show that children of immigrants make up one in four people under 18, and are now the fastest-growing segment of the nation’s youth, an indication that both legal and illegal immigrants as well as minority births are lifting the nation’s population. Currently, the share of children in the U.S. is 24%, falling below the previous low of 26% in 1990. The share is projected to slip further, to 23% by 2050, even as the percentage of people 65 and older is expected to jump from 13% today to roughly 20% by 2050 due to the aging of baby boomers and beyond. [Wall Street Journal]