Undocumented Immigrants: Florida Ranks 4th In Country

Florida has 605,000 undocumented immigrants, according to a new study from InsideGov.

InsideGov synthesized the most recent estimates and broke down the undocumented immigrant population groups by country of birth. This information comes from the Migration Policy Institute’s “Unauthorized Immigrant Population Profiles,” which was published in 2013 and contains the most recent data estimates.

InsideGov then ranked the 25 states with the largest populations of people living there illegally, and ordered the states from smallest to largest undocumented populations.

The majority of Florida's undocumented workers hail from Mexico, according to the study. Other places of origin include Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras, Nicaragua and Brazil, among others.

Here are the top 10 states with the most undocumented immigrants:

1. California -- 3,034,000
2. Texas -- 1,464,000
3. New York -- 867,000
4. Florida -- 605,000
5. Illinois -- 519,000
6. New Jersey -- 509,000
7. Georgia -- 393,000
8. North Carolina -- 342,000
9. Arizona -- 264,000
10. Virginia -- 247,000

InsideGov estimates that, nationally, the group makes up 5.1 percent of the U.S. workforce and pays about $12 billion into Social Security. The number of documented people in the U.S., estimated at almost 11 million, is actually on the decline.

Patch editor Tim Darnell contributed to this report.

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