For more than a century California has set the immigration trend for the nation:
"Using official state figures, demographer Leon Bouvier concluded that immigration accounts directly and indirectly for 98 percent of California's population growth between 1990 and 2002. Direct immigration contributed 57 percent of the rise, while the rest came from births to foreign-born women, said Rubenstein. "Behind the headline statistics are two telling factoids. First, net migration from other states has virtually ceased. Traffic congestion, schools, the water crisis, the state's fiscal meltdown, are all a big turn-off to citizens of other, less troubled parts of the country.
"Second, the average California mother is expected to give birth to 2.1 children over her lifetime. This is the so-called "replacement fertility rate which, if sustained over time, will result in a stable population. The devil is in the details: established residents and immigrants from non-Hispanic groups "Asians, Blacks, Whites, American Indians, and Pacific Islanders "are all reproducing at below replacement rates. Hispanic mothers, by contrast, are on course to have 3.25 children over their reproductive lifetimes.
The Immigration Deficit
Once upon a time political correctness did not prevent Californians from discussing the fiscal burden imposed by illegal aliens. In the early 1990s California faced a sinking economy not unlike today's. Social welfare caseloads exploded, state revenue declined by more than 25 percent, and the state's budget deficit was an unprecedented one-third of total general fund spending.
"Caseloads continued rising even after the recession ended, a trend many officials blamed on illegal immigrants, said Rubenstein. "In 1993 California Gov. Pete Wilson sued the federal government for the costs of state services to illegals "widely estimated at $2 billion ($2.9 billion in 2009 dollars) "arguing that Washington mandated the provision of such services while failing to prevent the illegal influx. Five other magnet states "Arizona, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Texas "joined the suit.
"The issue propelled the drafting of Proposition 187, a state initiative denying certain services to illegal aliens. A firestorm ensued. Besides racism and anti-Latino bias, immigrant groups charged the Wilson administration with grossly exaggerating the net cost of illegal aliens on the state's budget.
The 1994 study found that the 1.7 million illegal aliens then residing in California and their U.S.-born children:
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