Undocumented immigrants who repeatedly get caught in the United States don’t keep returning time and time again for financial rewards. They keep coming back to be reunited with loved ones, many of whom are U.S. citizens.
The study by the University of Arizona’s Center for Latin American Studies sought to examine why undocumented immigrants come to the U.S. and keep trying to enter the country over and over again even after being deported.
“People put down roots, they have families here,” Jeremy Slack, a primary researcher for the study told NBC Latino. “To make them go away, that’s not going to happen.”
The profile of the average person spoken to among the group of more than 1,100 recently deported immigrants, according to the story, was that of a 31-year-old male who had eight years of formal education and had been in the U.S. seven years. Half have at least one family member who is a U.S. citizen and about one in four have at least one child under the age of 18 who have U.S. citizenship, which is different from the common perception of undocumented immigrants as seasonal laborers and young single men with no real ties to the United States, the report states.
