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Has cross border migration between the US and Mexico hit “net zero”? That’s the finding put forth by Douglas Massey, reported by the Christian Science Monitor. Massey, a Princeton University sociologist, found that from 2008 – 2009 about 1 million undocumented immigrants left the US. He says those who left have not been replaced since, creating a net zero migration for the first time in 50 years.

The decrease in immigration to the US by undocumented workers since 2008 has not slowed anti-immigration legislation in the same time frame, exemplified by harsh new laws established in Arizona in 2010 and in Georgia in 2011. The laws generally allow local law enforcement officers to demand proof of citizenship status from anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. Although courts have struck down some of the most controversial provisions of these laws, the threat of living under intense scrutiny drove immigrants out of Arizona and Georgia at the same time that a lack of work in other states also pushed immigrants out of the US. A complex new reality has emerged in which tough talk about stopping unauthorized migration continues while a lack of immigrant workers negatively impacts the US economy. In Georgia, immigrants fled in numbers so high last year that the University of Georgia estimates the state’s economy lost $391 million due to a lack of agricultural workers.

In addition to economics, the issue of US immigration encompasses personal need, law and order philosophy, and what it really means to be a citizen. A multi-faceted and deeply personal examination of these controversial issues are explored in a new book, Living “Illegal”: The Human Face of Unauthorized Immigration. The book’s four authors examine the reasons for immigration and its effects on both sides of the border through interviews with undocumented migrants and the native born Americans who live alongside them, as well as those who are creating an alternative vision for US immigration.

GUEST: Marie-Friedman Marquardt, a scholar-in-residence at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, GA.