The Great Recession deterred many of America's so-called unauthorized immigrants because — if you listened to AM radio you'd know this — they all want to come here and not work.

We kid. Anyway, there's some bad news on the horizon for those immigrant haters. The Pew Hispanic Center says that, just as the economy is starting to warm up again (of course, those AM radio talkers will say it isn't), illegal immigration just might be on the rise once more:

The Center said this week that the “sharp” decline we've seen since the recession started in 2007 (the government says it officially ended in 2009, if you can believe that) has come to an end and that the number of paperless travelers to the United States might just be on the upswing.

The organization says in a summary of its data:

The sharp decline in the U.S. population of unauthorized immigrants that accompanied the 2007-2009 recession has bottomed out, and the number may be rising again. As of March 2012, 11.7 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States, according to a new preliminary Pew Research Center estimate based on U.S. government data.

The estimated number of unauthorized immigrants peaked at 12.2 million in 2007 and fell to 11.3 million in 2009, breaking a rising trend that had held for decades.

In other words, lock your doors, white people, there will be folks here who want to serve your food and mow your lawns again. And they weren't born here.

Stereotypes aside, the Pew Hispanic Center says nearly half of unauthorized immigrants counted in 2012 were from places other than Mexico. About 5.7 million of them (we're looking at you, Asia) are from countries other than Mexico, versus 6 million from Mexico.

Following a recession-related decline, U.S. unauthorized immigration may be on the rise

Interestingly, a report in the New York Times over the weekend said that immigration to Mexico, based on a newfound interest in manufacturing and other business down south, was actually up, more so than Mexican immigration to the United States:

… More Americans have been added to the population of Mexico over the past few years than Mexicans have been added to the population of the United States, according to government data in both nations.

Still, there are plenty of undocumented folks in California, which leads the nation in that population. In fact we have more than one out of five (21 percent, or nearly 2.5 million) of the people in American illegally, the Center says.

Pew says we might have to contend with even more cheap labor and illegal nannies. The horror.

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