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Immigration Is the Only Thing Propping Up California's Population (msn.com) 112

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
California's population grew 0.6% in 2024, adding nearly 250,000 residents to reach 39.43 million, according to Census Bureau estimates. The growth came entirely from a rebound in international immigration, which surged to over 300,000 people after plunging to 44,000 during the pandemic's worst year.

Without immigration, the state would have shrunk significantly as domestic migration remained negative. The H-1B visa program alone brought nearly 79,000 skilled workers to California in 2024. Since 2010, California has added 2.7 million immigrants, with half coming from Asia and slightly more than a third from Latin America. The immigration-dependent growth model puts California at particular risk from potential federal policy changes, as more than a quarter of its population is foreign-born -- the highest share nationwide.

Immigration Is the Only Thing Propping Up California's Population More | Reply

Immigration Is the Only Thing Propping Up California's Population

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  • Not "significantly" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dpille ( 547949 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2025 @02:27AM (#65406555)
    With literally zero immigrants since 2010, California's population would have shrunk by one tenth of one percent per year. Significant only if you're trying to make some political point about the state.

    • Re:Not "significantly" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2025 @03:02AM (#65406593)

      Yeah, doing some quick math using the numbers from TFS - the population loss without international immigrants would've been 50K people. Out of a population of 39.5 million.

      Somehow I don't think LA's traffic is getting any better...

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by saloomy ( 2817221 )
        Los Angeles has a 37% illegal immigrant population alone (as notated on city contracts to its vendors). Traffic would change overnight in SoCal if every illegal immigrant were suddenly deported. These are the facts. Do with them what you wish.

        • The resulting economic collapse would be rather ugly. The following starvation would be uglier.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by rta ( 559125 )

          Mmm... sources i'm finding say no more than 10% illegal immigrants in LA county and maybe closer to 6%. Though of course those are still still huge numbers compared to the population change numbers being discussed i TFA and this thread.

          (and that's without counting their american born children which are relevant if we're talking population growth)

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by skam240 ( 789197 )

            Good work. I get tired of people just making shit up so they can make the argument they want to make.

            • Make up all the shit you want. I got my sources from the City of Los Angeles: https://bca.lacity.gov/Uploads... [lacity.gov]

              Today, approximately 1.5 million immigrants live in the City of Los Angeles, about 38% of the City’s total population

              The document is about the border wall and the trump administration, tying in the illegal / undocumented nature of those cited.

          • Mmm... sources i'm finding say no more than 10% illegal immigrants in LA county and maybe closer to 6%. Though of course those are still still huge numbers compared to the population change numbers being discussed i TFA and this thread.

            (and that's without counting their american born children which are relevant if we're talking population growth)

            Where are your citations to back your facts?

            Same thing can be said of the other poster pointing to government contracts that should be openly available to all for review.

        • I have a source saying you're an illegal immigrant and you should be deported.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          illegal immigrant population

          The topic, both in TFA, TFS, and the post you responded to, is international migrants. Nothing illegal about that yet.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          Traffic would also change overnight if you set off a nuclear weapon in the city. These are the facts. Do with them what you wish.

          Also, LA's total immigrant population is 35% as of 2022. https://dornsife.usc.edu/eri/p... [usc.edu]

          Given that not all immigrants are "illegal", you are a racist liar. But /. already knows that about you. These are the facts. Do with them what you wish.

        • Do with them what you will.

          He was referring to the numbers, nothing else. (You can put that down slowly, sir)(The cell phone, too)

        • There would be a huge traffic jam because the infrastructure would not be able to support that many busses.

        • no possible way (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          A number like that defies all logic if you've been to LA. Yes there are a lot of "illegal" immigrants but more than 1 in 3 is insane, that is simply not possible. If 37% of people in the city were "illegal" think of what that would mean in terms of jobs, banking, etc. There are only so many kitchen, carwash, construction labor etc jobs to be done. You'd hear Spanish everywhere. Also, think about what that would mean in terms of demographics - google says 47% of LA city is Hispanic, do you really think 37 ou

          • Bankers dont live in LA city, they live in the surrounding neighborhoods. This is a city document, not a county document. Beverly Hills is its own city.

        • Los Angeles has a 37% illegal immigrant population alone

          11% according to the data I see.
          https://www.uscisguide.com/sta... [uscisguide.com]

          37% sounds pretty unlikely.

          ...These are the facts. Do with them what you wish.

          Saying "these are the facts" does not make them the facts.

            • Los Angeles has a 37% illegal immigrant population alone.

              11% according to the data I see.

              [posts link saying "Today, approximately 1.5 million immigrants live in the City of Los Angeles, about 38% of the City’s total population."

              That is a problem I see a lot in MAGA supporters: they use the words "immigrants" and "illegal immigrants" interchangeably.

              I will also note without comment the next line in the link you posted, "Los Angeles is a great city because of the successful
              integration of immigrants into its civic, social, cultural and economic fabric.              "

              • Read the purpose of the document, that is what democrats are implying, not republicans. What does the border wall have to do with legal immigration, which republicans advocate for?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The economy and the social contract is a Ponzi scheme that relies on an ever growing population. Even low population growth is a huge problem.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The economy and the social contract is a Ponzi scheme that relies on an ever growing population.

        No, it relies on increasing consumption and sufficient taxation. People consume more, individually, than they did 100 years ago and are more productive in terms of GDP.

    • It's not how our economy works (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2025 @09:46AM (#65407261)
      The population decreases significant because our entire economy is based on rapid population growth feeding the insatiable appetite for profit. Without that growth our corporate Masters start to devour us, which is exactly what you're seeing with plummeting wages and 25% of the country are there unemployed or living below poverty.

      Think of it this way, you know how half of Slash that will tell you that you don't need to worry about automation and AI because you can just go be a plumber?

      Well actual plumbers only make about 20 to 25 an hour which isn't a hell of a lot of money in a country where a two-bedroom apartment costs $2,100 a month and up.

      The big money you see plumbers making is people running their own business and employing other plumbers.

      The thing is if you're going to be a plumber with your own business and a few employees under you and that's basically a pyramid scheme. You make the good money by running your own business so you can get all the money and then having a couple of employees so that you can pocket a bit of the money they are earning in exchange for stable paycheck and some experience and more importantly the know how for finding customers and running a business which plenty of people can't do.

      But to make that happen you need a growing economy and population with it because otherwise what ends up happening is everyone ends up concentrated in a tiny little area and you're competing with too many other plumbers.

      See those two guys you employed sooner or later are going to be happy with the $20 an hour you're paying them. That's not enough for them to afford a wife and kids.

      So they're going to strike out on their own. If the population is growing we are building new cities and they're going to set up shop far enough away from you that they aren't directly competing with you. If not then they're going to set up shop in your backyard and suddenly you're all competing for the same shrinking pool of customers.

      This pretty much goes for every single business and every single thing humans do. On top of that while this is going on you have private equity companies moving in to try and take over your business. In a massively growing economy they would be focused on making all their money off the growth but because the population and economy aren't growing they are going after a smaller prey than usual, you and your little plumbing business.

      Now there are alternatives to endless rapacious growth as a economic system but they require social changes and discarding certain sacred cows and that's not going to happen because as your population is declining you have more and more old people and therefore they are running the show because they can outvote the young people and they don't like change. They want everything to be exactly the way it was when they were 12.

      So we are basically trapped in a nostalgia fueled Doom loop and I don't see any way out of it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      With literally zero immigrants since 2010, California's population would have shrunk by one tenth of one percent per year. Significant only if you're trying to make some political point about the state.

      It depends on which one tenth of one percent is leaving.

  • What Californians call economic emmigrants (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheMiddleRoad ( 1153113 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2025 @02:54AM (#65406585)

    We call them losers.
    If you can't make it hear, it's for a lack of trying or a lack of competence. There are lots of opportunities.
    The immigrants who come to California work quite hard and often make lots of money.
    A lot of retirees leave, of course, cashing in on their houses that have dramatically appreciated.

    • The underground economy of moving drugs and traficked people around while moving dollars south seems to be doing a brisk business and bringing violent crime, drug addiction, and homelessness along with it. And the people who are getting victimized the most are those same illegal economic migrants that you're cheering for....along with the taxpayers who ultimately pay the price in high taxes and strained public services.

      Congrats.

  • Doesn't even make sense (Score:4, Insightful)

    by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2025 @03:26AM (#65406637) Homepage

    Even if the numbers were significant, it doesn't make any sense. People leave California due to high housing costs. If the population ever did actually start to decline notably, the issue would be self correcting.

  • The H-1B visa program alone brought nearly 79,000 skilled workers to California in 2024.

    Well, that’s one way of describing the kind of targeted marketing it takes to sucker people into moving to California these days.

    How blessed those new California taxpayers must feel to have such a grand local economy and pay hardly any tax as a result.. /s

  • Good (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'd rather have immigrants than Trumptards.

  • There have been more than 400,000 [wikipedia.org] live births in California every year since 1979. In contrast, the article says that 300,000 people immigrated in 2024, and even plunged to 40,000 a few years earlier. Well, 400,000 is greater than 300,000 so no, immigration is far from the only thing propping up California's population.

  • The fertility rate in the USA is around 1.79, which is below the replacement rate of 2.1. So the only thing keeping population growth going in the USA as a whole is immigration.

    Even the state with the highest fertility rate (South Dakota) had a rate of 2.00 in 2023... below replacement rate.

  • Unclear why one of the traditional routes of population increase in US states - for the last 425+ years in most states, closer to 525 years in what is now California - is deemed to be "propping up" the population. Almost as if there is an agenda and a narrative to declare more recent immigrants as not real citizens or not real people. As opposed to, say, a German family that immigrated to the United States in 1904.

  • ..yet investors demand endless growth.
    This is impossible. We need steady-state sustainability.
    Pundits claim we need more housing to support ever increasing populations, and claim that the end of population growth is a bad thing.
    Another way to look at it as that we are achieving equilibrium

  • less than 20% of the children born in california are white. and only about 35% of the current population is white.

    there is no magic dirt. bringing in the 3rd world will turn california and america into the 3rd world. this country is toast, start stock piling bullets and rice.

  • The next thing in the news will be no H-1B visas for blue states.

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