The great California exodus has ended — thanks in part to legal immigration
California is rebounding from an unprecedented population drop during the pandemic, and an increase in legal immigration over the last couple of years is partly responsible.
California’s population is more than a quarter foreign-born, the highest figure in the nation, according to census data. Net immigration from foreign countries into the state rebounded from nearly zero at the height of the pandemic to its current levels in just two years, helping to damp the effects of the California exodus, in which an increasing number of residents relocated to other states.
The state’s population rose slightly in 2024 after three years of precipitous decline, according to data from the state Department of Finance.
The California influx of legal immigrants includes people who came to the U.S. on temporary work visas, as refugees, as asylum seekers or to become permanent residents.
The biggest effect has been in the Central Valley and rural parts of Southern California, such as the Imperial Valley, with big agricultural industries.
Net immigration was highest in Imperial County, where in 2023 8 net immigrants arrived for every 1,000 residents living in the county.
California farming interests were big supporters of President-elect Donald Trump, and they hope his promised crackdown on immigration will not cause problems for them attracting and hiring the farmworkers they need.
Santa Clara, Alameda, San Francisco and Sacramento counties were all high on the list, each gaining more than 4 immigrants per 1,000 residents, a Times analysis of census data showed. The analysis did not include undocumented immigrants.
The Bay Area is home to many tech companies that rely on the H-1B visa program, which permits foreign-born computer scientists, engineers and other highly skilled workers to migrate to the United States. Last month, there was a war within the Trump base over H-1B, with some far-right activists saying the program hurts American workers. But Trump allies including billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk shot back, saying that skilled workers help the American economy.
More than 9,600 employers in California sought clearance for at least one H-1B worker in fiscal 2024, The Times reported last month.
For the first time since 2020, California’s population rose last year as COVID-19-related deaths waned and migration and immigration patterns shifted.
Los Angeles and Orange counties were not far behind, each with more than 3 net immigrants arriving per 1,000 residents.
“It’s important to realize that the pandemic had an effect, but also the Trump administration sort of throttled legal migration,” Manuel Pastor, director of the USC Equity Research Institute, said, referring to the immigration restrictions Trump imposed after taking office in 2016.
“They also made it harder for naturalize [applications]. The [application] backlog went from five to six months in 2015 to 12 to 14 months by 2019 even before the pandemic locked up the ability to process naturalization applications,” he said.
“COVID economic disruptions also induced migration,” he said, causing people to flee to the U.S. from countries like Venezuela.
The surge of migrants since 2021, including asylum-seekers and others, has lifted the U.S. and California economies by filling otherwise vacant jobs.
“The U.S. economy’s recovery from COVID has completely outpaced the rest of the world, so that’s both created a demand for labor and been made possible by new labor arriving in the country,” Pastor said.
On the American economy’s rebound, he did not equivocate: “Immigrants have made the soft landing possible.”
Nearly 37% of all foreign-born Californians came from Mexico as of 2023, census data show. China was next highest at nearly 10%, followed by the Philippines at almost 8%.
By contrast, Los Angeles had a bigger proportion from North and Central America: 31% from Mexico, 12% from El Salvador and 10% from Guatemala as of 2022.
In all, the dramatic rise in immigration from 2021 to 2023 was one of three defining factors that counteracted the California exodus that saw residents relocating to other states.
The number of immigrants to California rose from negative 500, representing an overall loss of immigrants, to an addition of about 115,000 in two years as pandemic restrictions were lifted. The exodus itself also slowed by about 100,000 people in the two-year span. Finally, natural increase — the difference between births and deaths — leveled off as COVID deaths waned.
“Today, half of California’s children have at least one immigrant parent,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote in June for the state’s Immigrant Heritage Month.
“Our economy, our universities and our communities are all stronger and more innovative because of the nearly 11 million immigrants that call California home.”
Sign up for This Evening's Big Stories
Catch up on the day with the 7 biggest L.A. Times stories in your inbox every weekday evening.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
