The excerpt shown in Fig 1 from the Pew Hispanic Center’s June 2005 paper “Unauthorized Mi...

The excerpt shown in Fig 1 from the Pew Hispanic Center’s June 2005 paper “Unauthorized Migrants: Numbers and Characteristics” discusses the difficulty of accurately predicting the number of illegal immigrants in the United States

a. This paper suggests that considering the average rate of change over longer intervals is a reasonable way to measure the growth of the unauthorized migrant population. Use the data from April 1980 (3 million migrants) and from April 2000 (8.4 million migrants) to find a linear model that gives the number of unauthorized migrants as a function of years after April 1980.

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b. Use your model to predict the number of unauthorized migrants in April 2004. How does your answer compare to the value given in the chart for March 2004?

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c. In what year does the model predict that the number of unauthorized migrants will grow to 15 million?

Figure 1 Unauthorized at New High—Details of Trend Uncertain