Resource for the number of illegal Mexicans in DC

March 9, 2007 8:02 AM

Posting for a friend "Anyone know of a good resource/website to find out how many illegal Mexicans there are in the DC metropolitan area? I have looked everywhere I can think of and can't find a good number."
posted by Cool Alex to law & government (17 comments total)

Is your friend using "Mexicans" as an ignorant catch-all for every brown-skinned illegal immigrant? Or does he really only want to know about those from Mexico, and not, say, Guatemala?
posted by skwm at 8:11 AM on March 9, 2007

She is only looking for Mexicans - the problem is there is not a large Mexican population in the area, so it is difficult to find a correct number.
posted by Cool Alex at 8:16 AM on March 9, 2007

I could be wrong, but as a native Californian I'm pretty used to the illegal immigrant issue so I'll pipe in with my first thought. Since they have snuck into the country and are generally trying very hard to blend within communities I'm not sure that any statistics you find are going to be super exact. They will probably be very rough and rounded off at best. (Plus, it probably complicates things when you can't include an entire family in the statistics since children born in America are legal citizens.)
But like I said, I could be totally wrong & maybe someone really has a firm number somewhere. I'm just thinking unlawful immigrants aren't big on filling out census forms...
posted by miss lynnster at 8:19 AM on March 9, 2007

National Council of La Raza has a list of publications - scroll down to Demographics and it looks like there's one available for $10 that may have what you need. Also - National Immigration Forum might be useful. Good luck.
posted by selfmedicating at 8:21 AM on March 9, 2007

Using "undocumented" rather than "illegal" might help with search terms.
posted by occhiblu at 8:31 AM on March 9, 2007

Possbly your friend could call a DC area Latino organizing/support/advocacy organization like CASA, or DC Latino PAC. But if their agenda for this question isn't from within or in solidarity with the Mexican community, I'd suggest they don't. I'm sure everyone with any connection at all to the issue is sick of fielding hostile questions about "illegals".

Also be aware that the groups I linked to don't deal specifically with the Mexican population or undocumented immigrants (and I'd suggest your friend uses that word if they call).

I guess if your friend's agenda is different, the Virginia Chapter of the Minute Men would be more than happy to pull up a number (out of their ass).
posted by crabintheocean at 8:43 AM on March 9, 2007

Using "undocumented" rather than "illegal" might help with search terms.

Occhiblu, I think Alex is look for Cyborg Mexicans that have been enhanced with illegal, military grade technology, making them illegal. If that's the case adding Steve Austin to the terms should help.

Paying the Ask Metafilter bad comedy research tax ... Here's a PEW document pdf that might be helpful in coming up with an estimating methodology, and the parent site might be helpful as well.
posted by alan at 8:47 AM on March 9, 2007

FYI-My friend is doing this research to provide a service for them...not to punish or out anyone.
posted by Cool Alex at 8:50 AM on March 9, 2007

Do you mean the El Salvadoran "mexicans"? The majority of Latinos in DC and its suburbs are El Salvadoran...sure, there are Mexicans...but not nearly as many.
posted by cloudstastemetallic at 8:58 AM on March 9, 2007

From Her: "the correct term is "Salvadoran" not "El Salvadoran." I have a degree in Latin American studies so I know the difference."

This is the problem she is running into. It's a small community but a good number on how many there are would be very helpful. She is trying to establish a service based on the number of MEXICANS living illegally in DC.

Thanks for the info so far.
posted by Cool Alex at 9:18 AM on March 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

According to the Census bureau, in 2005 there were roughly 5000 persons of Mexican origin in DC. This does not imply that these were undocumented persons.

It's going to be difficult to get anything approaching a precise number in such a small area as DC, since as a Census Bureau study notes, "Recent arrivals and noncitizens were highly mobile."
posted by desjardins at 9:29 AM on March 9, 2007

desjardins, you didnt provide an exact link, but that number probably refers to the Mexican population *only* in the District of Columbia, not in the DC metro area (which is census-defned to include the suburban regions of DC in Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia.
posted by jare2003 at 10:43 AM on March 9, 2007

The Pew Hispanic Center might have some information to help you.
posted by catseatcheese at 11:51 AM on March 9, 2007

Sorry cool alex...didn't see that you already had that...
posted by catseatcheese at 11:51 AM on March 9, 2007

Her best bet might be to contact whatever local agencies there are that serve the Latino population - day-laborer organizations, churches, etc. - and ask them. She'll have to explain what sort of service she wants to set up, and probably why it's for Mexicans specifically (as opposed to for folks from south of the border in general). Statistics like this are going to be hard to come by, and their accuracy will always be suspect.
posted by rtha at 12:52 PM on March 9, 2007

Your friend might want to call some demographers at local universities and see if they or their grad students are doing such a project.

But what I think your friend will find is that no one will have very believable numbers. Almost no one has an incentive to count and to publicize that count. The illegal/undocumented migrants are trying to fly under the radar screen; social service agencies working with illegal/undocumented populations generally don't want to call attention to these populations, and how pervasive they might or might not be, because of not wanting to attract hostile attention (either to the migrants or to the agency's budget); no government agency (such as the Census) is producing such a count; and finally the methodological issues involved are really tough (given all the incentives to not be counted, and for front line agencies to not help). So any numbers you do find, take with a ton of salt, and accept that they are probably poor estimates based on small samples and lots of assumptions.

If you don't find anything better, you could come up with an incredibly crude ballpark figure by taking the percent "hispanic" in the metro area from the census; get a ballpark estimate of how much of that is "Mexican," maybe from the Pew Center of Council of La Raza or some agency within the metro government; and then multiply that by the national estimates of the ratio between legal and illegal Mexican immigrants. But I hope you can see how many layers of assumptions, non-comparable numbers, and just plain guessing would be built into such a figure, and I think it would be worth not much more than just pulling a convincing figure out of your butt.
posted by Forktine at 2:14 PM on March 9, 2007

Pew Center or Council of La Raza
posted by Forktine at 9:09 PM on March 9, 2007