{"id":1349,"date":"2025-06-21T04:16:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T04:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1349\/"},"modified":"2025-06-21T04:16:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T04:16:15","slug":"immigrants-in-california-once-shunned-now-embraced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1349\/","title":{"rendered":"Immigrants in California: Once shunned, now embraced"},"content":{"rendered":"

In summary<\/strong><\/p>\n

California voted to bar immigrants from schools and social services in 1994. Now most Californians see immigrants as a benefit to the state.<\/p>\n

Welcome to CalMatters, the only nonprofit newsroom devoted solely to covering issues that affect all Californians. Sign up for\u00a0WhatMatters<\/a>\u00a0to receive the latest news and commentary on the most important issues in the Golden State.<\/p>\n

In 1994, a 26-year-old Alex Padilla, sporting a newly minted engineering degree from MIT, was back at home living with his parents in the San Fernando Valley when that fall\u2019s most heated ballot measure campaign dragged him into a life of politics.<\/p>\n

Proposition 187, the Save Our State initiative, would bar undocumented immigrants across California from using public schools, taxpayer-funded social services and non-emergency medical care.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to get involved, so that families like mine, communities like mine, would not continue to be scapegoated or targeted,\u201d Padilla, whose parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico, said in an interview in 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That attitude put him in the political minority at the time. Backed by then-Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican who made the campaign a centerpiece of his reelection<\/a>, Prop. 187 passed with a commanding 58%, including majorities in 51 out of 58 counties. That included Padilla\u2019s Los Angeles County, where it won by eight percentage points.<\/p>\n

California has changed in the three decades since, a political and cultural transformation that is in many ways personified by Padilla\u2019s career. In just a single generation, the political clout immigrants hold in California has soared. So have the legal protections afforded even to those immigrants who are unauthorized to live here. On the whole, public opinion on immigration policy, border security and the rightful role of immigrants in American life has inverted from 31 years ago. Prop. 187 was voided by a federal judge<\/a> shortly after its passage, but its effect on California politics endures.<\/p>\n

Case in point: Padilla, the reluctant young activist, is now the first Latino U.S. senator to represent California. In that role he has become one of the most visible symbols of the clash of values between the nativism of President Donald Trump\u2019s administration and California\u2019s liberal consensus on immigration. After last week\u2019s jarring altercation<\/a>, in which Padilla was forcibly removed from a press conference held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and briefly handcuffed, elected officials across California lined up to lionize and defend him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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      \"\"<\/p>\n

      This isn\u2019t Pete Wilson\u2019s California anymore.<\/p>\n

      Immigration policy a \u2018settled issue\u2019 in California<\/p>\n

      Pollster Mark Baldassare has been chronicling the change for decades. In 1998, he and his colleagues at the Public Policy Institute of California began asking Californians a simple question: Are immigrants a \u201cbenefit\u201d or a \u201cburden\u201d to California?<\/p>\n

      Respondents were evenly split in the first survey. Ever since, a majority \u2014 one that has grown with each decade \u2014 has come to see immigrants as a boon to our state. In February, when PPIC most recently asked the question, 72% of respondents chose \u201cbenefit.\u201d That included 91% of Democrats and 73% of political independents, though only 31% of Republicans.<\/p>\n

      \u201cThis is pretty much a settled issue,\u201d said Baldassarre.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      Part of that sweeping change can be explained by the state\u2019s shifting demographics. If the U.S. is the land of immigrants, California is doubly so<\/a>. More than a quarter of the state\u2019s population was born abroad, and almost half of California\u2019s children were born to an immigrant parent. More than half of California\u2019s immigrants are naturalized U.S. citizens<\/a>.<\/p>\n

      And California\u2019s immigrant community is diverse: 49% are originally from Latin American countries and 41% from Asia. For the past decade, more immigrants<\/a> from Asia have entered California than from Latin America.<\/p>\n

      But California\u2019s changing demographics are only part of the reason immigration politics have seen such a radical shift in such a relatively short period of time, said Adrian Pantoja, a political science and Chicano studies professor at Pitzer College in Claremont<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      \"AGraduating students at the Fresno State Chicano\/Latino Commencement Celebration in the Save Mart Center in Fresno on May 18, 2024. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters\/CatchLight Local<\/p>\n

      It\u2019s not a law of nature that Latinos and other demographic groups with sizable immigrant populations should favor the Democratic Party. Plenty of Latinos<\/a> and Asian Americans<\/a>, for example, hold traditionally conservative opinions \u2014 on specific border and immigration-related policies and a host of other issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      Had the GOP \u201creached out effectively to Latinos, to Asian American voters \u2014 populations that were inclined and trending toward the Republican Party\u201d the state GOP might still be an electoral force, said Pantoja.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      Instead, the state party hitched its political future to a ballot measure aimed at penalizing undocumented immigrants and their children \u2014 and hasn\u2019t won a statewide race since 2006.<\/p>\n

      Still, as in much of the nation, Latino support for Republicans in the last presidential election ticked up in California. In nine of 12 counties where Latinos are the largest demographic group, support for Trump increased from 4 to 6 percentage points between the last two presidential contests, depending on the county.<\/p>\n

      The legacy of Proposition 187<\/p>\n

      Three decades after that great California political rupture, the fruits of Prop. 187 are apparent in who holds power in California.<\/p>\n

      Padilla is California\u2019s senior U.S. senator. Both chambers of the state Legislature have elected Latino leaders \u2014 Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas<\/a> of Salinas and Senate President Pro Tem-elect Monique Lim\u00f3n<\/a> of Santa Barbara. In the early 1990s, the count of Latinos in the Legislature bounced around the single digits. Today, there are a combined 42 members in the Democratic and Republican parties\u2019 respective Latino caucuses out of 120 members.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      That rise in political power has translated to changes in policy.<\/p>\n

      In 2017, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Senate Bill 54, California\u2019s sanctuary state law<\/a> that largely bars state and local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. The bill\u2019s author, Kevin de Leon, also traces his start in politics<\/a> to Prop. 187.<\/p>\n

      More recently, the state has expanded Medi-Cal, the state\u2019s health insurance program for low-income Californians and those with disabilities, to all immigrants without legal status. Newsom signed successive expansions into law starting in 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      Where Prop. 187 was authored to deprive undocumented immigrants of social services, California\u2019s Medi-Cal expansion was its antithesis.<\/p>\n

      The generational impact of that ballot measure was demonstrated in 2010, when immigrants were mobilized to vote and shift the state further to the left.<\/p>\n

      By then, a quarter of the state\u2019s electorate was Latino, said Thad Kousser, a professor of California politics at UC San Diego.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      \u201cLatinos become this voting block that helps deliver the state to Jerry Brown, and then the state becomes Democratic in every single statewide office, in every election\u201d since, he said.<\/p>\n

      That year, Brown defeated billionaire businesswoman Meg Whitman in an acrimonious gubernatorial race, showcasing California as an outlier in the national red wave and ending a run in which Republicans won the governor\u2019s race six times out of the previous eight elections. Democrats lost no congressional seats in California even as the party was routed nationally<\/a>.<\/p>\n

      By 2016, the respective leaders of the State Assembly and Senate were Latino, a first in California<\/a>.<\/p>\n

      \"Hundreds<\/p>\n

      \"A
      \nFirst:<\/strong> Hundreds of protesters gathered at Los Angeles City Hall to demonstrate against the \u201cSave Our State\u201d proposition, Prop. 187 on Nov. 7, 1994. Photo by Nick Ut, AP Photo Last: <\/strong>Former California Gov. Pete Wilson addresses members of The Employers Group at Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, on July 18, 1995. During the breakfast meeting, Wilson talked about his views on affirmative action. Photo by Rene Macura, AP Photo<\/p>\n

      But not all efforts to reverse the conservatism of the 1990s in California have succeeded. In 2020, a ballot measure to largely reverse the state\u2019s ban on using race, ethnicity or gender as factors in public university admissions and government grant-making failed to woo voters<\/a>. In the state\u2019s population center of Los Angeles County, a majority of Asian voters shot down the proposal while only 55% of Latino voters backed it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

      And immigrants or their children make up a sizable chunk of the GOP in the state capital. When voters in 2020<\/a> elected Redlands Republican Rosilicie Ochoa-Bogh<\/a>, the child of Mexican immigrants, she became the first GOP Latina state senator in California\u2019s history. Today the Republican Senate caucus has at least three members who are immigrants or whose parents were born abroad, according to their public biographies \u2014 30% of the caucus. Before being elected to the Assembly as a Republican, Tri Ta became the first Vietnamese American to serve as mayor of a U.S. city<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

      Medi-Cal rollback shifts views<\/p>\n

      Recent polling shows the latest wave of Medi-Cal expansions may have gone too far even for California\u2019s immigrant-friendly electorate. A majority of Californians \u2014 58% \u2014 oppose health coverage for immigrants without permanent legal status, according to PPIC\u2019s June 2025 survey.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      Other polls show a majority of likely voters still support health insurance for immigrants.<\/p>\n

      This mixed picture emerges as California grapples with a third successive fiscal year of multibillion-dollar deficits and sharply increasing Medi-Cal costs. While those data may indicate softening political support for the boldest of California\u2019s policies aimed at helping undocumented immigrants, it doesn\u2019t spell a political realignment, said Kousser.<\/p>\n

      \u201cCalifornia moved so far to the left that there\u2019s almost nowhere to go other than the slight counter-reaction,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

      Baldassare of PPIC agreed, saying the Medi-Cal survey results may simply reflect a growing concern about the state\u2019s finances. He noted that Newsom has proposed freezing enrollment.<\/p>\n

      On some other measures affecting immigrants, Democratic lawmakers and Newsom have diverged. Last year the Legislature approved a bill to essentially adopt a novel legal theory to permit public college students without legal authorization in the U.S. to work on their campuses. Newsom vetoed the bill<\/a>.<\/p>\n

      Anti-ICE protests: A new Prop. 187 moment?<\/p>\n

      There is some indication that California\u2019s philosophical support for immigrants is, at least in part, accelerated by Trump. The share of respondents who called immigrants a \u201cbenefit\u201d in PPIC\u2019s surveys shot up during the first Trump administration and ebbed during Joe Biden\u2019s stint in the White House. The most recent survey, the first since Trump returned to power, saw another spike.<\/p>\n

      That has some immigrant rights advocates hoping that the Trump administration\u2019s current sweeping deportation policy will galvanize a new generation of political activists in California.<\/p>\n

      \u201cWhether it\u2019s post-Prop. 187 or post-9\/11 for middle eastern South Asian communities, at some point you realize that you are being endlessly and inhumanely targeted and if you don\u2019t speak up, and if you don\u2019t practice your First Amendment rights, and if you\u2019re not civically engaged, then you\u2019ll be taken advantage of,\u201d said Masih Fouladi, executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center. \u201cI think those are really the things that brought people together then, and what are bringing people to the streets now.\u201d<\/p>\n

      \"AProtesters gather over the 101 freeway in Downtown Los Angeles in support of the \u201cDay Without Immigrants\u201d march, on Feb. 3, 2025. Photo by J.W. Hendricks for CalMatters<\/p>\n

      He said if he were asked a few months ago whether California elected leaders were shifting to the center on immigration, he\u2019d have said yes. But Trump\u2019s immigration raids in Los Angeles are \u201callowing elected officials to come out more strongly\u201d against the apprehensions, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      Christian Arana, vice president of policy at the Latino Community Foundation, was just six years old when Prop. 187 was on the ballot. He has distinct memories of marching with his family, everyone clad in white shirts, surrounded by a wide array of his neighbors chanting delightfully brash slogans about someone named Pete Wilson.<\/p>\n

      \u201cFor six-year-old me, what I understood was that my parents, my neighbors, my community was under attack because some man \u2014 in that case the governor of California \u2014 was blaming California\u2019s problems on them,\u201d he said. \u201cI wonder how young children are experiencing this moment now.\u201d<\/p>\n

      Fifteen-year-old Nathon Ponce has an answer: He feels vulnerable. The rising high school sophomore at USC Hybrid High College Prep stood with his aunt several hundred feet from law enforcement as they fired projectiles and less-lethal rounds at protesters in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday. He wants to see the government create a legal pathway to citizenship for immigrants without that status, \u201cinstead of pushing them away.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

      More broadly, he was there to support his community, which \u201csome people consider a vulnerable group, like Hispanics and low-income working people,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I just want to show my support by, like, actually attending a protest.\u201d<\/p>\n

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