Why the Trump admin’s immigration sweeps threaten California’s population, economy

Immigration attorney Valerie Sigamani speaks out against ICE raids in San Diego File photo by Gabrielle Wallace It hasn t happened yet but California is bracing for a demographic and economic hit under President Donald Trump s multi-pronged effort to limit the entry of people born abroad and deport those already in the U S In fact during the last Trump administration California s population declined in part because immigration to the state slowed down after the White House put up increased obstacles to enter the U S according to the state s chief demographer though COVID- didn t help The Newsom administration is worried about history repeating itself enough to cite Trump s immigration policies as an economic menace in the state budget forecasts Key business sectors including hospitality and construction rely on the labor of workers in the U S without legal authorization who themselves are a small portion of California s immigrant population The state s leading tech companies major drivers of state wealth overwhelmingly employ highly educated people born abroad And all these people help California maintain its population and its status as the state with the greater part electoral college votes during presidential elections A full third of the state s prime working-age population is made up of immigrants including immigrants in the country without authorization That latter group represents roughly a tenth of the state s workers disclosed Giovanni Peri an economics professor at UC Davis who studies the economic impact of immigrants And despite popular rhetoric California workers living here without legal authorization fill jobs that scarce legal residents want The majority of the undocumented workers in California have been here for a long time an average of years Peri announced They have family and they have kids who are American citizens normally Peri mentioned So these are people very well integrated in the business activity of California More than a quarter of the state s population was born abroad double the national average Nearly half of California s children were born to an immigrant parent and more than half of California s immigrants are naturalized U S citizens Plus California s immigrant neighborhood is diverse are originally from Latin American countries and from Asia For the past decade more immigrants from Asia came to California than from Latin America After Trump directed a pause in immigration raids at farms hotels and restaurants two weeks ago days later he doubled down again on those industries and targeted major cities in a social media post We must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America s largest Cities such as Los Angeles Chicago and New York where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside These and other such Cities are the core of the Democrat Power Center he wrote A large business group the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce distributed a announcement this month that mentioned it s deeply concerned by modern enforcement actions that have disrupted the well-being of our communities compromised residents safety and threatened the stability of our local business activity Here are three approaches an immigration crackdown could affect California Congressional seats and the electoral college California is on track to lose at least one more congressional seat after the U S Census counts all the residents in the country in and Trump s policies on legal and illegal immigration could further erode the state s electoral college dominance For much of the last three decades more residents in California have moved to other states than out-of-state residents have moved to California But the overall population loss to out-migration is offset by the sheer number of immigrants attracted to California Though the trend has slowed down lately the state is home to the largest number of immigrants in the country about a fifth of the total U S immigrant population If that immigration stops then that s going to have particular real consequences for our population rise and ultimately for our representation for sure revealed Eric McGhee a demographer and politics researcher at the Population Program Institute of California Just the right amount of news Just the right amount of news Get California s the bulk essential headlines without feeling overwhelmed Get California s the bulk essential headlines without feeling overwhelmed Email address By clicking subscribe you agree to the terms By representation he means both the number of House seats California is apportioned after the census and by extension the number of electoral college votes the state is given which is calculated by adding a state s House seats and U S Senate seats Because Congress capped the number of House members to nearly a century ago a state basically requirements to grow its population at a higher rate than the national average to gain seats California didn t do that in the previous decade as a consequence it lost a House seat for the first time in state history in The electoral math concerning immigration in national elections is nuanced though People in the U S without legal authorization are counted in the U S Census So if Trump s immigration raids lead to a large decline of people in the country without proper legal status that affects California s overall population But Florida and Texas the largest states that now regularly assistance Republican candidates in presidential elections also have large numbers of people without proper legal status California has an estimated million here without authorization down a million from a decade ago Texas has million and Florida million That means those states have a slightly larger percentage of people here without proper legal status than California according to tallies by the Pew Research Center But those states are also domestic net-migration winners they gain more people from out of state than they lose to other states One major reason California loses so various people is the high cost of housing McGhee says high living costs are also increasingly a drag on the state s attractiveness to new international arrivals Bottomline if you re interfering with immigration flows to California that s going to hurt the state s increase declared McGhee Unless we can somehow start to attract people back to the state from other states and reverse that out-migration But that doesn t seem likely to happen anytime soon he added California relies on undocumented labor Workers without proper legal status have allowed the economic activity of California to grow in countless sectors Peri announced They work in fields that U S legal residents generally don t want either because they have higher levels of schooling want higher incomes or have retired A record disclosed last week by UC Merced and the business-focused think tank Bay Area Council Economic Institute estimated that removing all undocumented immigrants from California would decrease economic activity by billion or of the state s GDP That figure includes both direct labor by undocumented workers and the economic output generated by their and their employer businesses spending In construction mass deportations would curb GDP by and in agriculture the document s authors revealed Undocumented immigrants make up more than a quarter of the workforce in both industries They also discovered about of the state s small business owners are undocumented as well as about of the state s homeowners about a third of the state s undocumented population The majority of this population has very deep and longstanding ties to the state of California mentioned Abby Raisz research director at the Bay Area Council Economic Institute They re really embedded in our financial market both in dollars and cents and institutional knowledge on job sites Three-quarters of U S registered voters including who backed Trump disclosed they agreed that immigrants without proper authorization mostly fill jobs that American citizens don t want The Pew Research Center informed in California adults without legal authorization work at much higher rates than the overall workforce Around of California adults without authorization to stay in the country work Peri declared the comparable figure for the state s overall working age population is around They don t have access to any of the welfare aid that a citizen will have because they are undocumented and so the only source of income for them is really work Peri explained That s in spite of the fact that they contribute billions of dollars in tax revenue to local state and federal governments according to the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Strategy If Trump s immigration raids and deportation efforts force these workers to leave companies will start leaving California because they cannot find the construction workers the farm workers hotel and hospitality will become smaller because you don t have this type of worker declared Peri And companies are limited by how much more they can pay workers to attract new employees before the price of their goods exceeds what buyers can afford That affects U S -born workers and legal residents as well who d have fewer job openings as companies stall their progress plans But undocumented immigrants concentration in low-wage industries has also made them vulnerable State labor agents have uncovered undocumented immigrants to be particularly at exposure of wage theft and other exploitation and have focused their enforcement efforts in industries that disproportionately employ such workers such as car washes garment factories and janitorial services How immigrants drive California s economic system Peri revealed that when we talk about immigration overall there s an even larger positive effect on the financial sector since half of current immigrants are college-educated and so are big players in founding companies and helping lead California in science and device And so the wage impact of immigration in total there is no evidence that is depressing wages he revealed An immigration crackdown may prompt a growing number of would-be or current immigrants to reconsider California or the U S announced experts with the California Department of Finance a state agency in Gov Gavin Newsom s office They might be thinking why am I going to invest and build something in California or the United States reported Somjita Mitra chief economist in the forecasting division of the Department of Finance Affair in point two-thirds of Silicon Valley workers were born abroad according to a summary by Joint Venture Silicon Valley Tech companies and the high compensation they pay workers are a chief source of state revenue for California There s evidence that Trump s policies slows down immigration to California In the - fiscal year about immigrants moved to California according to records from the Department of Finance By - a couple of years into Trump s first term but before the COVID- pandemic that figure drops to individuals Several of it is slowing down what s happening at foreign embassies making them come multiple times for multiple vetting sessions slowing their processing down mentioned Walter Schwarm the finance department s chief demographer The figure rebounded in the latter half of Joe Biden s presidency to more than new international arrivals It does not include immigrants without proper legal status And the vast majority of immigrants are between the ages of and so they really form a core of the labor force he added especially as more U S -born Californians retire The country lost out on at least billion in economic advance because of a slowdown in foreign-born workers between and a period that includes Trump s first term and the COVID- pandemic exposed Madeline Zavodny an economist who wrote a paper for the National Foundation for American Procedures Trump s immigration sweeps and the fear they induce are also prompting immigrants to shop and spend less which is a drain on the economic activity If there s a lot of uncertainty if there s a lot of confusion it kind of makes people not want to go out and spend their money Mitra mentioned The fact of the matter is a lot of the revenue that is being generated and a lot of the economic upsurge that is being generated in this country is coming from the contributions of legal immigrants Schwarm noted Urged if she s worried Trump s immigration policies will have a detrimental effect on California s business activity Mitra disclosed yes I am worried about that CalMatters reporter Jeanne Kuang contributed to this story CalMatters is a nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization bringing Californians stories that probe explain and explore solutions to quality of life issues while holding our leaders accountable