Those fighting to reduce the number of illegal immigrants in America may be winning the battle, if a new report is correct. The Center for Immigration Studies said yesterday that the illegal immigrant population here declined by 11%, or 1.3 million people, between August 2007 and May of this year.

Critics of the report say the data is flawed, and also take issue with the report’s claim that the drop in illegal immigrants is due to stepped-up enforcement against undocumented workers.

The Center for Immigration Studies is “lumping together apples and oranges,” Ali Noorani from the National Immigration Forum says. “They are relying on data from the Census Bureau that includes all immigrants, not just illegals.”

Mr. Noorani also says the drop in illegal immigrants is mainly due to a downturn in the economy. A study by the Pew Hispanic Center backs up his view estimating earlier this year that unauthorized Hispanic workers make up some 12% of total construction workers in America. A downturn in building would logically take a toll on the immigrant population. “People come over here to work. The immigrant labor market is very efficient,” Ray Perryman, founder of the eponymous financial analysis firm, says, adding this drop in illegal immigrants is “not surprising.”

However, Steve Camarota, co-author of the CIS report, challenges this: “You can see from the data that the downturn in illegal immigrants began several months before unemployment turned up.”

Assuming for the moment that the CIS study is correct, is this good news or bad news? It depends on who you ask. Mr. Camarota sees undocumented workers as negative for the economy. “A worker who comes in and works full-time for $10 an hour is a drain on government coffers. It’s not a very good deal.” He says that studies show half of Mexican immigrant households using some form of welfare program such as Medicaid or food stamps. “It’s hard to make a case that unskilled workers are good for the U.S.”

Mr. Noorani disputes this conclusion, saying such studies “ignore the contribution of illegals through sales and property taxes, as well as through social security contributions that are never claimed.” He adds, “Competition is more severe when the government allows employers to exploit one segment of the workforce. We want to fix immigration so that there is a level playing field. If you have people competing fairly, everyone wins.”

The CIS study will doubtless be used as ammunition by those trying to push through tougher enforcement legislation aimed at illegal immigrants. After the bipartisan immigration reform bill collapsed last summer, state legislators across the land geared up to pass their own enforcement measures. These initiatives are being challenged in the courts, but meanwhile are changing the labor situation in many parts of the country.

In the first quarter of this year, more than 1,100 immigration-related bills were introduced into 44 states, on top of a similar number that was presented last year. Many of these efforts have been thwarted by local business coalitions, who have protested that harsh measures would reduce the available labor pool and end up costing their states dearly.

Earlier this month, for instance, a group calling itself the Coalition for a Working Oregon released a study showing that a proposed new rule requiring employer verification would cost the state 173,500 jobs and $17.7 billion in lost annual production.

The Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform challenged the conclusions of the CIS study yesterday, and warned that if the enforcement approach succeeds, “America will lose much of her ability to feed her people.”

The group cites sizeable crop losses resulting from shortages of immigrant workers, including one quarter of the pear crop in California in 2006 and one million pounds of asparagus in western Michigan in 2007, and said that in North Carolina, a pickle processor had to import cucumbers from India last year because a local planter scaled back, fearing a shortage of harvest workers. They also cite a Texas A&M University report that 77% of grower respondents had taken steps to actively downsize their businesses because of labor concerns.

“The largest tomato grower in the northeastern U.S. announced before the planting season started that he could no longer risk producing tomatoes in Pennsylvania due to the lack of legally authorized harvest labor,” the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform said in a statement. “A majority of the farm workers planting, harvesting and tending fruits, vegetables, dairy cows and other livestock in the U.S. are unauthorized. Ample evidence points to the reality that there is no replacement domestic labor force available,” the report concluded.

The agriculture industry is not alone in fearing the impact of tougher immigration policies. An update by a new organization called ImmigrationWorks USA, led by Tamar Jacoby, says that business groups across the country have helped defeat harsh bills proposed in Indiana, Kentucky, Iowa, Idaho, and Tennessee, among others.

Ms. Jacoby started the new outfit to rally employers across America to support sensible immigration reform that addresses businesses’ real need for workers, provides realistic enforcement measures, and allows the country to regain control of who comes into the country. She thinks that immigrant workers are “a beneficial market transaction,” adding: “Our vital growing economy absorbs them. Could we do without them? Sure. If we went back to the 1950s, when women stayed home and we did away with the restaurant boom, if we did not have a service economy, if we did not allow the economy to expand to the benefit and comfort of the entire population. But this is not the America of the 1950s.”

Mr. Perryman agrees that “we need that workforce. We don’t need ways to get them out of the country, we need better ways to document them.”

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