The number of illegal immigrants living in the United States in 2015 fell to its lowest level since 2009 – a drop marked by a steady decline in the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico, a new study showed.
The analysis of U.S. census data by Pew Research Center published Tuesday found there were 11 million illegal immigrants in 2015 — about 3 percent fewer than the 11.3 million undocumented people in 2009, at the end of the recession.
During that same six-year period, the number of Mexicans in the country illegally dropped to 5.6 million from 6.4 million, the analysis found.
In 2015, the number of Mexican illegal immigrants was about 51 percent of the total illegal immigrant population, The Daily Caller reported.
"The numbers are not going up, and in fact, the numbers for Mexicans have been going down for almost a decade now," Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at Pew, said in an AP interview, per Vocativ. "And that is counter to a lot of the rhetoric you hear."
According to Pew Research, illegal immigration surged for nearly two decades during the 1990s and 2000s, reaching a high of 12.2 million in 2007, but it later fell and has since has stayed around 11 million.
As Mexicans living in the country illegally has dwindled, the number of illegal immigrants from other parts of the world has grown, however, the report found.
Asian immigrants without legal status rose by to 1.5 million in 2015, from from 1.3 million in 2009. Those living in the United States illegally from Central America, meanwhile, increased to 1.8 million from 1.6 million during that time, according to the report.
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