About 2.5 million illegal immigrants, 400,000 per year on average, have come to the United States since 2009 when President Barack Obama took office, according to a new report.
The numbers are based on data from the Center for Migration Studies, Pew Research Center and the U.S. Census Bureau, which were compiled into a
study by the Center for Immigration Studies released Monday.
Following Obama's controversial executive order in June 2012, in which he allowed some young illegal immigrants to stay in the country under certain conditions, the immigration numbers started to spike from mid-2013 to about May 2015 when 790,000 came into the country.
Typically, the number of immigrants that leave the country offsets the number of people entering the country, but the Center for Immigration Studies suggests that Obama's change in immigration policy kept the nation from reducing the number of illegal immigrants in the country.
"Had the United States not allowed so many new illegal immigrants to settle in the country since 2009, the total number of illegal immigrants would have fallen by 2.5 million. But the arrival of so many new illegal immigrants offset this attrition in the illegal population," the report says.
Obama enacted another executive action in 2014, in which temporary legal status was given to 4 million illegal immigrants who live in the country. The Obama administration has been in a legal battle with 26 states over the move.
The immigration debate has already been at the center of the debate among the presidential candidates, especially after Donald Trump drew criticism for comments he made about illegal immigrants when he launched his campaign.
Hillary Clinton said in May that she would go even further than Obama and work toward giving illegal immigrants
"full and equal citizenship."
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