Immigration has emerged in recent years as a major national policy issue, one affecting Southern California more intensely than almost any other region. This region has a large and growing immigrant presence, and the changes over the past two decades have been so pronounced that many perceive a break in the region's social continuity. Worries have been expressed about the changing ethnic mix, a growing number of poorly educated workers, and rising numbers of the dependent poor. These concerns reflect the sharp transitions of the past decade. The outlook for the future is uncertain, of course, but the best available information indicates more favorable trends. A stabilization of the immigrant population is likely to be accompanied by maturing settlement and upward economic mobility.
A. The Growth in Immigration
The Southern California region1 has become home to more foreign-born residents than any other region of the country, accounting for more than 22% of all the immigrants in America. Half of all these immigrants have arrived in just the past ten years. For this analysis, "foreign-born" residents are equivalent to "immigrants" while those arriving within the preceding decade are distinguished as "recent" immigrants.
From a local perspective, the most relevant gauge of immigration is the percentage of the Southern California population that is foreign born, together with the rate of increase in that percentage. Exhibit 1 maps the century-long trend of falling and then rising immigrant population. California's population has always held a higher immigrant concentration than the nation's. From a high point in 1900, when 25% of all Californians were foreign-born, the percentage plunged to a low point in 1960 or 1970. From that point forward, the immigrant concentration surged abruptly upward. By 1990, Southern California's concentration had exceeded that recorded by the state back at the beginning of the century, and by the year 2000 the state's concentration also should return to its historic level.
Interpretation of this trend differs in relation to two different temporal perspectives. In the long-run historical perspective, the foreign-born concentration could be judged as returning to "normal," reflecting the earlier times when Mexicans played a prominent (even founding) role in California and when California was a frontier beckoning to migrants from across the continent as well as across the sea. The alternative view stresses the lifetime experience of living Californians. While the foreign-born concentration slowly declined for six decades, its dramatic rebound in the past two decades is a sharp contrast to conditions in the 1950s and 1960s which also are assumed "normal." Of course, no period is truly normal, but all experience is relative to some reference, and for the majority of Californians the post-war decades define what has been the normal conditions (even if historically exceptional) within which their lives have been lived. In this lifetime view, the sharp rebound of foreign-born population poses a notable change in social environment.
The volume of recent immigrants approximately doubled from the 1960s to the 1970s, and again from the 1970s to the 1980s. This had the effect not only of increasing the percentage who are foreign born, but it also altered the maturity of immigrants' settlement patterns. Exhibit 2 details the growing immigrant population as a series of arrival cohorts, with new arrivals layered on top of their predecessors. In 1980, 1.28 million immigrants were recently arrived (in the years since 1970), adding on top of 1.08 million immigrants that had arrived before 1970. Between 1980 and 1990, an additional 2.32 million recent immigrants were added to the total population.
Exhibit 2 also includes projections of the number of likely immigrants in the 1990s and 2000s. Based on research conducted for the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), and reported in Pitkin and Simmons (1996), these projections are the most detailed and professionally developed of any available today. For the present purposes, the Fannie Mae projections for California were stepped down to the Southern California region based on past relationships. The estimates foresee a leveling of the growth rate of new arrivals, with 2.10 million persons added in the 1990s and 2.04 million added in the 2000s. However, those new arrival cohorts are added to the growing base of previous immigrants. The result is that the fraction foreign born in the region's population will grow from 26.6% in 1990 to 28.6% in 2010.
During the initial stage of immigrant build-up in Southern California the rapid changeover created a shock to the region's population. One consequence described above was the dramatic rebound in the proportion that were foreign born (Exhibit 1). A second consequence has been less noticed. With so many new arrivals after decades of low migration, the majority of foreign-born residents were only recently arrived. Given that the majority of all immigrants were newcomers, the immigrant population was relatively unassimilated. Use of English and economic status was low, while attachments to the homeland remained high. Those initial arrivals have now lived in California for two decades and they are setting down roots.
The outlook for the future is one of a maturing immigrant population, not only in terms of advancing age, but also in terms of advancing duration of U.S. residence (Pitkin and Simmons 1996). Exhibit 3 describes the changing balance of the foreign-born population in terms of different settlement maturities. The top band in the graph portrays the percentage of all foreign-born residents who had arrived less than 10 years before, while the bottom band portrays those who have been settled for 20 or more years. Clearly, that bottom band of settled immigrants is rapidly growing, while the fraction that are newcomers is proportionally less. Many important effects derive from this process of maturing settlement, as detailed in a series of reports from the ongoing Southern California Immigration Project conducted in the School of Urban Planning and Development (Myers 1995; Myers et al. 1996; Myers and Lee 1996). These effects include rising naturalization to U.S. citizenship, growing English proficiency, advancing occupational status, self-employment, rising incomes, falling poverty, falling overcrowding of housing, rising homeownership, rising car use, and falling transit use. Two important examples are detailed below.
B. Nature of the New Arrivals
Recent immigrants are by definition newcomers, but how else may they be described? Among the most visible differences after arrival is the newcomers' racial or ethnic identity. That in turn is a product of countries of origin. Exhibit 4 details the origins of newcomers prior to 1980 and prior to 1990. There is a remarkable stability to these patterns in recent decades: Mexico and the rest of Latin America have maintained a 61% share of all newcomers, while Asian and Pacific countries have experienced a very slight increase, from 25.1% to 27.5% of the newcomers. All other parts of the globe together contribute less than 14% of the newcomers to Southern California. These country-of-origin patterns map directly onto race-ethnicity: virtually all the Latin American arrivals are Latino and all the Asians are Asian. In Southern California, only a tiny fraction of immigrants are black, either from Africa or the Caribbean, and all of the rest-including Middle Easterners-are lumped together as "white" in census designations of race-ethnicity.
One of the greatest policy debates surrounding the nature of the newcomers centers on their skill levels and preparation for economic contribution. The single variable that best indicates this skill level is educational attainment. As shown in Exhibit 5, among all recent arrivals prior to 1990, and who were at least 25 years old, there were more immigrants with less than a ninth grade education (33%) than with a college degree (18.4%). In fact, barely half (51%) of all immigrants had attained at least a high school degree. This educational pattern varied significantly across origin groups. Among both whites and Asians, 32-33% of immigrants had college degrees, versus 5% among Latinos. Conversely, 22% of whites and 26% of Asians had less than a ninth grade education, versus 50% of Latinos. The Latino figures may even understate the prevalence of low education, because our data exclude persons under age 25, while many Latino immigrants are 15-24 and already finished with their schooling (Vernez and Abrahamse 1996).
The skill levels of newcomers are thus highly polarized between origin groups. In part this reflects the peculiar combination of Mexico's close proximity and low standard for public education. Immigration typically does not draw from the least skilled portion of the source country, because of the barriers posed by travel costs and admissions criteria, but the close proximity of Mexico permits migration by the less skilled, much of it over land and undocumented. In this regard, it is noteworthy that even Central Americans have educational attainments a couple of years higher on average than Mexicans, but the latter comprise the bulk of Latino immigrants.
C. Trajectories of Change After Immigration
The most overlooked aspect of immigration is the rate of change after immigration (often termed assimilation). Assimilation theory has stressed changes across generations, drawing upon the experience of European immigrants from the turn of the century. More recently, scholars have attempted to measure changes within the lifetime of the first generation, considering both the different origins of recent arrivals and the different historical conditions receptive to immigrants. Two aspects of immigrant adaptation are highlighted here: growth in English proficiency and decline in poverty.
English proficiency is tracked from 1980 to 1990 for immigrants who had arrived in the 1970s. When first observed they were very recent arrivals and 10 years later they are more adjusted. Ten years later the immigrants are also 10 years older, and so we adopt a "double cohort" strategy for tracing birth (age) cohorts within immigration cohorts as they grow older and more settled.2 Exhibit 6 measures the rising percentage who speak English "very well." The white dots represent the 1980 observation for arrivals in the 1970s, while the black dots represent the 1990 observation of the same cohorts 10 years later. The slope of the arrows defines the trajectories toward English proficiency.
The group of "white" immigrants, drawn from Europe, the Middle East, and such British origin countries as Canada and Australia, have much higher levels of English proficiency after arrival. While little improvement occurs after age 35, the arrows move upward among children and young adults. Asians have lower proficiency after arrival, and Latinos have still lower levels of proficiency. Among the latter, despite gains in every cohort, proficiency 10 years after immigration remains very low, excepting immigrants who arrive as children.
The decline in poverty is a major policy question. While some have alleged that recent immigrants are doomed to a lifetime of impoverishment and dependency, no data has been provided that traces their progress over time. Here we follow the same strategy as for English proficiency, tracing cohorts from 1980 to 1990. The steep decline in poverty is remarkable after 10 years of adjustment to life in Southern California. To be sure, the decline is sharper for whites and Asians, most likely because of their stronger educational attainments, but it also is evident among Latinos.
D. Summary
Immigration is a dominant aspect of the changing social and economic landscape of Southern California, one warranting continued monitoring and interpretation. The brief profile offered here has stressed the temporal issues raised by immigration, including both measurement of rates of change and the temporal context by which those changes are evaluated. The sharp break from recent history has created the perception of social discontinuity. However, looking forward we see that immigrants' settlement is maturing as they reside longer in the region. This foretells important improvements in a number of dimensions in years to come.
References
Myers, Dowell. 1995. "The Changing Immigrants of Southern California," Research Report No. LCRI-95-04R, Lusk Center Research Institute, School of Urban Planning and Development, University of Southern California.
Myers, Dowell, Maria Yen, and Lonnie Vidaurri. 1996. "Transportation, Housing, and Urban Planning Implications of Immigration to Southern California," Research Report No. LCRI-96-04R, Lusk Center Research Institute, School of Urban Planning and Development, University of Southern California.
Myers, Dowell and Seong Woo Lee. 1996a. "Immigration Cohorts and Residential Overcrowding in Southern California." Demography. 33 (1): 51-65.
Myers, Dowell. 1996. "A Double Cohort Method for Temporal Analysis of Immigrant Adaptation," unpublished paper.
Pitkin, John R. and Patrick A. Simmons. 1996. "The Foreign-Born Population to 2010: A Prospective Analysis by Country of Birth, Age, and Duration of U.S. Residence," Journal of Housing Research 7 (1):1-31.
Vernez, Georges and Allan Abrahamse. 1996. How Immigrants Fare in U.S. Education. Santa Monica: RAND.