Publications

A year and a half after a lengthy, often rancorous debate over immigration reform filled the chambers of a stalemated Congress, the issue appears to have receded in importance among one of the groups most affected by it--Latinos.

Almost one-in-ten (9%) Latino homeowners say they missed a mortgage payment or were unable to make a full payment and 3% say they received a foreclosure notice in the past year.

A small but significant decline has occurred during the current recession in the share of Latino immigrants active in the U.S. labor force.

Field Dates: 11/11/08 – 11/30/08 Respondents: Nationally-representative sample of 1,540 Latino respondents ages 18 and older Margin of Error: +/-3.0 percentage points at the 95% confidence level The survey focused on politics and the 2008 presidential election; attitudes about and experiences with the economy; remittance behavior; and media and technology use.

Hispanics voted for Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden over Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin by a margin of more than two-to-one in the 2008 presidential election, 67% versus 31%.

The Hispanic vote in Florida has long been an anomaly. It has tended to be heavily Republican, while the Latino vote in the rest of the country has tended to be heavily Democratic.

Hispanics have accounted for more than half (50.5%) of the overall population growth in the United States in this decade, a significant new demographic milestone for the nation's largest minority group.

The current economic slowdown has taken a far greater toll on non-citizen immigrants than it has on the United States population as a whole.

There were 11.9 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States in March 2008. The size of the unauthorized population appears to have declined since 2007.

Half (50%) of all Latinos say that the situation of Latinos in this country is worse now than it was a year ago.