Wherever you stand on the issue of illegal immigration and what the U.S. should or shouldn’t do about it, here’s some relief from the rhetoric. The Pew Research Center did a little digging and today published some relevant numbers. So just how many unauthorized people live in the United States?

They number between 11.5 and 12 million.

And where do they come from?

More than three quarters (78%) migrated here from Mexico or some other Latin American country.

That means 22 percent come from somewhere else, of course. That’s a fact you hear little about. But they are mostly men seeking day jobs, right?

Men make up only about half (49%) of the unauthorized population, with women (35%) and children (16%) comprising the rest. … Some 5% of all the jobs in the U.S. civilian in labor force are held by unauthorized immigrants.