How legal immigration helped end great California exodus

California is rebounding from an unprecedented population drop during the pandemic and an increase in legal immigration over the past 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 dampen the impact 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 include people who came to the US on a temporary work visa, as refugees, asylum seekers or to become permanent residents. The biggest impact from the influx of immigrants has been to 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 Trump, and they hope his promised crackdown on immigration will not cause problems for them attracting and hiring the farm workers they need.

Santa Clara, Alameda, San Francisco and Sacramento counties were all high on the list, each gaining more than 4 net 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 that 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 Donald Trump base over H-1B, with some far-right activists saying the programme hurts American workers. But Trump allies like billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk shot back, saying the skilled workers helps 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.

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 realise 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 naturalise (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 naturalisation applications,” he said. “COVID economic disruptions also induced migration,” he said, causing people to flee to the US from countries like Venezuela.

“The US 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 Phillipines 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 -500, representing an overall loss of immigrants, to an addition of around 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.