MENU OF CALIFORNIA IMMIGRATION DATA RESOURCES

• General Information (below)
  
• Census Bureau Data - the state's population (past and current and projected to 2025)
  
• Legal Immigrants - details on the over 2,658,000 post-1990 immigrants.
  
• Social Issues - job competition, welfare, health care, education, housing, ethnic relations, etc.
  
• Illegal Immigrants - over 2,209,000 illegal aliens and growing.
  
• Public Opinion Poll
  
• Refugee Settlement (below)
  
• Foreign Students in California Schools (below)
• State Congressional Delegation Voting Record (below)
  

GENERAL INFORMATION                                                             California's Demographics in a Nutshell "The arithmetic of California's recent annual growth rate is simple: nearly 600,000 births (more than one a minute) minus about 225,000 deaths, plus more than 220,000 foreign immigrants, minus a quarter- million net loss to other states. That produces a net gain of around 350,000 a year...That would bring California's population, now 32.6 million, to 50 million by approximately 2050. That population expansion will have heavy environmental and economic impacts. More people mean more kids in school, more cars on the road, more air pollution, more demand for water, more farmland converted into housing tracts and shopping centers and more crowding in public and private facilities...The required school building program will cost tens of billions of dollars, and politicians simply don't know how to finance it."
Commentary by Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee, May 11, 1997

FAIR's Comment: Two points are missing from the above excellent thumbnail description of California's population growth dilemma--and immigration's role in it--and the report on the latest Census Bureau population projection.

• The two-thirds of overall population growth accounted for by new immigrants, understates the full impact of immigration, because it ignores the children born to immigrants after they arrive. In 1993, children born to immigrants in California accounted for 262,000 of 584,000 births (45%). If immigration were decreased, the number of children born to immigrants would also decrease.
  
• California's projected population increase is not inevitable. It assumes continuation of the current trends, including of new immigrants. The immigrant flow may be changed by public policy, both in better deterring illegal immigration and in lowering legal immigration.

Population Surge of 18 Million Seen for State by 2025
"A steady rise in births and a continuing stream of immigrants will add nearly 18 million people to California's population by 2025--something akin to the entire state of New York moving in, according to the latest projections by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Los Angeles Times, August 25, 1997

 

IMMIGRANT CHILDREN
In 2000 about half of all of Califonia's children are either foreign born or the child of an immigrant. Nine percent are first-generation immigrants (foreign born) and 40 percent are second-generation (a child of an immigrant).
(Source: "Check Points," The Urban Inst. Sept. 2, 2000)

Refugee Settlement
California has received over 77,360 refugees over the most recent ten fiscal years (FY'97-'06) including 5,247 persons in FY’06. 

 

Under the Office of Refugee Resettlement's (HHS/ORR) assistance funding for FY'02 $7,375,880 was available for refugee employment training and other services programs in California based on a three-year refugee settlement program covering 29,389 refugees (an average of $251 per refugee). This allocation did not include a larger share (55%) of funding programs for communities heavily affected by recent Cuban and Haitian entrants, communities with refugees whose cultural differences make assimilation especially difficult, communities impacted by federal welfare reform changes, educational support to schools with significant refugee students, and discretionary grants. ORR grants for FY’05 and FY’06 respectively were $36,132,114 and $35,568,841.

Below, a chart illustrates the sharp increase of foreign students attending school in Claifornia from 1960-2000.

For information on foreign student issues see: Foreign Students in the United States.

STATE CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION VOTING RECORD
You can view the voting record of your representatives in Congress regarding immigration issues in our voting report section.

You can find local immigration reform organizations here.

Revised January 2008