California’s immigrants vote, contribute to the economy and pay taxes too!

A friend of mine sent me a link today to the Immigration Policy Center. There I found a huge database of information, and links, about immigrants all over the country. Here are some powerful facts about California’s immigrants – note that they will serve to dispel the B.S. we hear from the Usual Suspects and Haters:

• 24.4% (or 13.2 million) of all registered voters in California are “New Americans”—naturalized citizens or the U.S.-born children of immigrants who were raised during the current era of large-scale immigration from Latin America and Asia which began in 1965—according to an analysis of 2006 Census Bureau data by Rob Paral & Associates.
• The Latino share of California’s population grew from 25.8% in 1990, to 32.4% in 2000, to 36.6% (or 13.5 million people) in 2008.  The Asian share of the population grew from 9.2% in 1990, to 10.9% in 2000, to 12.4% (or 4.5 million people) in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
• In California, nearly nine-in-ten (or 89% of) children in immigrant families were U.S. citizens in 2007, according to the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis at the University of Albany.
• “Immigrants comprise more than one-third of the California labor force. They figure prominently in key economic sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing and services. Immigrants provide leadership and labor for the expansion of California’s growing economic sectors—from telecommunications and information technology to health services and housing construction,” according to the California Immigrant Policy Center.
• Immigrants in California pay roughly $30 billion in federal taxes, $5.2 billion in state income taxes, and $4.6 billion in sales taxes each year. In California, “the average immigrant-headed household contributes a net $2,679 annually to Social Security, which is $539 more than the average US-born household.”
• Immigrants accounted for 34% of total economic output in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, 29% in the San Francisco metropolitan area, 25% in the Riverside metropolitan area, and 23% in the San Diego metropolitan area in 2007, according to a study by the Fiscal Policy Institute.  In fact, “immigrants contribute to the economy in direct relation to their share of the population.  The economy of metro areas grows in tandem with the immigrant share of the labor force.”
• Unauthorized immigrants comprised 9.9% of the California’s workforce in 2008 (or 1.9 million workers), according to a report by the Pew Hispanic Center.
• If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from California, the state would lose $164.2 billion in economic activity, $72.9 billion in gross state product, and approximately 717,352 jobs, even accounting for adequate market adjustment time, according to a report by the Perryman Group.
• The 2009 purchasing power of California’s Latinos totaled $252.7 billion—an increase of 263.8% since 1990. Asian buying power totaled $162.6 billion—an increase of 271.4% since 1990, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia.
• California’s 427,678 Latino-owned businesses had sales and receipts of $57.2 billion and employed 445,820 people in 2002, the last year for which data is available. The state’s 371,530 Asian-owned businesses had sales and receipts of $125.8 billion and employed 745,874 people.  Together, businesses owned by Latinos and Asians comprised more than one-quarter of all businesses in the state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2002 Survey of Business Owners.
• The share of California’s foreign-born Latinos who reported being proficient in English as of 2000 rose from 33.4% of those who had been in the United States for less than 10 years to 73.5% among those who had been here for 30 years or longer.
• The share of foreign-born Latinos in California who owned their own homes as of 2005 rose from 16.4% of those who had been in the United States for less than 10 years to 64.6% among those who had lived here for 30 years or more.
• The share of California’s foreign-born Latinos who lived below the poverty line as of 2005 droppedfrom 28.7% of those who had been in the United States for less than 10 years to 11.8% among those who had been here for 30 years or more.

Find out more about the economic contributions of California’s immigrants by clicking here.  They have a great blog too, at this link.