Los Angeles without immigrants? The notion is oxymoronic — akin to New York without tall buildings or Chicago without wind.
This is a city of immigrants inside a state of the same. Roughly one of every three people living in this city today began his or her life in another country; for California, that percentage is slightly lower, but the state is still one of the nation’s most attractive to immigrants. More than one in four of its residents have arrived from elsewhere. Immigration has been central to California’s history since the era of the Gold Rush, and it is vital to the culture, politics and life of Los Angeles and California today.
The results are to be celebrated. Los Angeles is safer and more prosperous because of its immigrant population. Those immigrants who came to this city, state and country did not bring crime with them; they did not arrive in search of welfare or government benefits; they aren’t here in order to sneak into voting booths and cast ballots.
Overwhelmingly, immigrants come to America for one of two reasons: to flee oppression or to work. Once here, they pay taxes, generate economic growth and obey the law more conscientiously than Americans born in this country.
Those may strike some as controversial assertions. They are not. As the work detailed in this issue of Blueprint makes clear, they are facts. They help explain why California’s economy is as strong as it is, and why Los Angeles has seen crime decrease to generationally low levels at the same time that it has attracted immigrants from around the world.
It is against that backdrop that the immigration raids of the past year have unfolded. And it is with appreciation of those facts that the raids have drawn such deep ire from so many residents and leaders of Los Angeles.
ICE’s presence in the city began with a bang last June, and it has since roiled immigrant communities, the city’s economy and local politics. It has affected school attendance and healthcare, increased the cost of many services and raised the ire of many neighborhoods. The state and city have fought the federal government in court and wrestled with authorities at all levels. It has been, to say the least, a trying moment in the city’s history.
All of which might be worth it if this exercise were securing some other benefit — making the city safer, say, or more affordable. But, as the research featured in this issue makes clear, that is precisely not the case. About the only good thing to have come from ICE’s presence has been a mild drop in traffic as migrants, afraid to venture out, have stayed hidden at home.
Immigrants — whether students here to study or executives here to manage; whether in this country on a work visa or having overstayed a lawful entry or having entered without documents at all — are so integrated into the heart of Los Angeles that there is no way to remove them without tearing deeply into the fabric of who we are. Even if that were desirable, and it is not, it would be impossible.
There is no Los Angeles without immigrants because Los Angeles is immigrants.
