New Data Underscores Immigrant Contributions to California
As pressure mounts for President Obama to quickly take action to provide relief from deportation for all undocumented immigrants, the California Immigrant Policy Center today released a new report detailing the contributions of immigrants to the state.
The report, the latest edition of “Looking Forward: Immigrant Contributions to the Golden State,” features statewide statistics and local data from seven key regions: the Central Coast, Central Valley, the Sacramento area, Greater Los Angeles, Inland Southern California, San Diego/Border region and the San Francisco Bay Area. Authored by researchers at the University of Southern California’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII), the report includes updated information on demographics, labor force participation, economic contributions, entrepreneurship, and numbers of eligible voters among all immigrants.
“Looking Forward” also zeroes in on undocumented immigrants’ contributions to the state’s GDP and the contributions of vulnerable workers with intermittent employment.
KEY FINDINGS FROM THE STUDY INCLUDE:
Demographics and mixed-status families
• 10.2 million Californians are immigrants – over one quarter of our state’s population.
• 26% or about 2.6 million of California’s immigrants are undocumented. Almost three in four non-citizens live in households that also have citizens.
Economic contributions.
• Immigrants produce 31% of the state’s Gross Domestic Product – nearly $650 billion annually.
• Undocumented immigrants alone contribute $130 Billion of the GDP – a figure greater than the entire GDP of Nevada – or AT&T’s total revenues.
Workforce.
• Immigrants are more than one-third of the state’s labor force and are more likely to be entrepreneurial and create their own jobs.
• Undocumented immigrants represent almost 1 in 10 of the state’s workers, making up 38% of the agriculture industry and 14% of the construction industry statewide. Civic participation.
• By 2015, immigrants eligible to naturalize and the already naturalized could represent as much as 33% of California’s electorate.
KJ