Children of illegal immigrants twice as likely to live in poverty

WASHINGTON - An independent research group says growing numbers of children of illegal immigrants being born in the U.S. are nearly twice as likely to live in poverty than those with American-born parents.

The study was released by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization. It estimates that 11.9 million illegal immigrants lived in the U.S. as of March 2008.

Of those, 8.3 million, or 5.4 percent of the U.S. labor force, worked primarily in lower-paying farm, construction or janitorial work. Roughly three out of four of their children or 4 million were born in the U.S. In 2003, 2.7 million children of illegal immigrants, or 63 percent, were born in this country.

Overall, illegal immigrants' children account for one of every 15 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

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