Serious question: Why are there so many Hispanics in CA? (Los Angeles: real estate, construction)

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by Charles

Mexicans (and Mexican Americans and Irishmen and Poles...) are strongly influenced by the catholic church which has philosophies on family planning and birth control.

The message from the catholic church to a father who makes $7/hr and who already has five kids is "Go ahead, have another kid."



The Los Angeles Unified School District is 73% Hispanic. It is 9% White.

I don't buy this explanation that people throw out about people having a lot of kids being the Catholic Church's fault. Maybe it was true at one time, but it's now extemely outdated. The fertility rate in Mexico has declined to 2.3 children per woman, which is only slightly higher than replacement level of 2.1. In other Catholic countries, it is very low. It's only 1.3 in Spain & Italy, 1.7 in Puerto Rico, and 1.9 in Ireland. Catholics only listen to the Church when it justifies something they want to do. Otherwise, they ignore it.

It seems to me poor people around the world have more kids regardless of religion. I think it probably has something to do with recognizing that if you're low on the economic totem pole, you have kids as a way of attaining status when you perceive your future economic prospects to be slim.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat.../2127rank.html

[TimC2462]

Originally Posted by mrzod

I'm new to CA, been here for about 2 yrs now. Although I don't see many Hispanics at work (I live in Silicon Valley NorCal), according this report there are almost 50% Hispanics living in CA.

Why are there so many? In SF, it's mostly Chinese people due to the building of the rail roads and such, but what's the history for Hispanics?

I appreciate your response, thanks.

edit: the report I was referring to is found here, California's white population on the decline | abc7news.com

From the US Census Bureau; Population Growth Rates from 2000 to 2006

1. Net migration from other countries is relatively high

2. Birth rate is high, about 2.5% annually 1.5% of the total population

3. Rate of natural increase is 2.2% compared to 0.6% of the total population

In summary, the total growth rate of Hispanics is 3.6% compared to 1.0% of the total population. See below.

TABLE 3: FIVE STATES WITH THE LARGEST HISPANIC POPULATIONS, 2006

California
36,457,549

Texas
23,507,783

Florida
18,089,888

New York
19,306,183

Illinois
12,831,970

U.S. Total
299,398,484

Keep reading....

"The U.S. Census Bureau does not have data on the
size of the illegal Hispanic population because it
does not try to determine immigration status when
conducting its various surveys. Its “foreign born”
category includes both legal and illegal non-citizen
immigrants.

"A recent study by the Pew Hispanic Center estimates
that a large fraction of foreign-born Hispanics are
illegal residents.7 It estimates that the unauthorized
population was 11.5 to 12 million in 2006. Some 66
percent of the unauthorized population have been
in the country for 10 years or less, and 40 percent,
or 4.4 million people, have been in the country five
years or less. Adult males account for 49 percent
of the unauthorized total, while 35 percent are adult
females. The remaining 16 percent of the unauthorized
population are children. In addition, there are an
estimated 3.1 million children who are U.S. citizens by
birth, living in families in which the head of the family
or a spouse is an unauthorized immigrant."

Source: http://www.naiop.org/foundation/hispanicgrowth.pdf (broken link)

[wburg]

We didn't exactly bar the door in 1848--through most of California's history, the border has been pretty permeable, especially when workers were needed. Large numbers came north around 1910 during the military upheavals in Mexico.

Fontucky: Yes, California used to be Spain, but the Euro-Hispanics became Mexicans. Whiteness in Mexican culture was somewhat different from whiteness in American culture: in the Mexican community, it is a matter of degree--lighter skin equals more Spanish/European ancestry. For Americans, it tends to be an "either/or" issue--but populations that were once not considered "white" can become "white" by proximity (various European immigrant groups were considered foreign and alien, like Germans, Irish, Italians, Greeks, Portuguese, etc.) In the western United States, groups that might not have been considered white on the east coast became white during the trip west--because there were even less "white" populations (Mexicans and Indians and Asians) there. But once you became a white American, it wasn't a matter of degree. You either were or you weren't--and their contention was that Mexicans weren't. But among the Mexicans, in the United States or in Mexico, being Mexican and being white were not mutually exclusive.

[John23]

I have to sort of laugh when people say, california use to be a part of mexico. There for, you can expect a lot of mexicans. Or it means a lot of mexicans can be there.

Louisiana use to be part of France. But the french aren't coming over to claim it. If everyone held grudges about what happened 150, 200 years ago, the world would look like a different place.

It's basically a factor of...

-Chronically poor economic problems in mexico, forcing migration north. Economic problems in tandem with amnesty and easy immigration policies in the US. The two seem to go hand in hand.

-Plus a very high birth rate vs whites, asians, blacks, etc in California. Those two will keep pushing the numbers up.

[user_id]

Originally Posted by mrzod

In SF, it's mostly Chinese people due to the building of the rail roads and such, but what's the history for Hispanics?

Hmm.....ever drive by a farm in California?

[Clarks]

so where are all the Euro-Hispanics?

They are here in large numbers, It is pretty easy to tell them from the Mestizo hispanic.

[calisnuffy]

The US Gov. has never controlled the borders as a result, a free for all.

[KC6ZLV]

Originally Posted by wburg

We didn't exactly bar the door in 1848--through most of California's history, the border has been pretty permeable, especially when workers were needed. Large numbers came north around 1910 during the military upheavals in Mexico.

Fontucky: Yes, California used to be Spain, but the Euro-Hispanics became Mexicans. Whiteness in Mexican culture was somewhat different from whiteness in American culture: in the Mexican community, it is a matter of degree--lighter skin equals more Spanish/European ancestry. For Americans, it tends to be an "either/or" issue--but populations that were once not considered "white" can become "white" by proximity (various European immigrant groups were considered foreign and alien, like Germans, Irish, Italians, Greeks, Portuguese, etc.) In the western United States, groups that might not have been considered white on the east coast became white during the trip west--because there were even less "white" populations (Mexicans and Indians and Asians) there. But once you became a white American, it wasn't a matter of degree. You either were or you weren't--and their contention was that Mexicans weren't. But among the Mexicans, in the United States or in Mexico, being Mexican and being white were not mutually exclusive.

Those "Euro-Mexicans" were called Californios, regardless of race. They later became Mexican citizens when Spain decided colonizing California was more work than it was worth. Additionally, the Californios weren't too crazy about Mexico, and even Mexico had difficulty persuading people to move into Alta California, even with land grants and citizenship through marriage and converting to catholicism (which didn't work for Spain either). Anyone who followed through this process became a Californio, regardless of what country they came from.


And you really need to set aside those books you are reading about "whiteness" taking over the world. They were written by people with paltry salaries because they majored in sociology, and needed something to supplement their salaries, so they dreamt up this "became white" thing to replace the process of assimilation into American culture (becoming American) to create controversy, and this kind of mentality keeps stirring the pot whereas racial and ethnic relations are concerned. Germans, Irish, Dutch, and other European ethnic groups were always considered white until some Marxist took it upon himself to define things differently so he could use several European ethnic groups as an example that "whitey" has so much power that he is assimilating everyone in his path due to white privilege, and he must be stopped!

[majoun]

There are about a million descendants of Californios living.

Many do not have Spanish last names, due to intermarriage through the years (which virtually always involved an "Anglo" male and a Californio female).

According to Gregory Rodriguez, less than 15% of California Hispanics have family in the state going back four generations or more - a category that not only includes Californios but also the descendants of Mexican immigrants of the 1910s and 1920s who fled the Mexican Revolution and the subsequent political turmoil in Mexico. As implied above, however, some Californio descendants would consider themselves to be "non-Hispanic white".

As for BRinSM's comment: prior to about 1980 virtually all Hispanic immigration into California was from Mexico, except for small Cuban communities here and there (Pasadena having perhaps the most well known). Before about 30 years ago, almost all Central Americans who came to the US went to Florida. I first met a Salvadoran in about 1976, a guy who was a friend of my grandparents, who operated a used car lot in the Pico-Union area (dominated by Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants prior to the Central American wave of immigration - it had been a Greek neighborhood before it was Latino) and who over the years brought most of his family to L.A. At the time I thought that was very unusual.

The patterns of Mexican immigration have changed over the years. Most Mexican immigrants prior to the '80s were from the north with a sizeable number from certain central states like Jalisco and Michoacan, and a few from Mexico City and vicinity. The Oaxacans didn't come until the '90s, when Southern Mexican immigration rose tremendously, and Northern Mexican immigration declined.

[SoCal35]

Originally Posted by mysticaltyger

I don't buy this explanation that people throw out about people having a lot of kids being the Catholic Church's fault. Maybe it was true at one time, but it's now extemely outdated. The fertility rate in Mexico has declined to 2.3 children per woman, which is only slightly higher than replacement level of 2.1.
It seems to me poor people around the world have more kids regardless of religion.

It's true that Mexico's fertility rate has declined sharply from a high of 7.2 children per woman in the 1960's to around 2.3 children per woman today.

That said, the link below is a very interesting (and reputable) research study by the PUBLIC POLICY INSTITUTE of California (PPIC) about Birth Rates in California which points out the following points:

Birth Rates in California (PPIC Publication)

1. More recent immigrants from Mexico to California have come from small towns and rural areas where educational attainment and income is quite low. Thus, the birth rates for these women are QUITE high: from 3.5 to over 4.7 children per woman. The less education...the higher the birth rate.

2. The birth rates for California-born Latinas is MUCH lower and in-line with the average birth rate for California as a whole. The study's authors argue assimilation and education are two key reasons.

3. The study also points out since about 1990, the BIGGEST contributor to California's growing population (Latino and non-Latino) is NATURAL INCREASE....not immigration.

The catholic church may not be to "blame" but they certainly aren't helping. Moroever, for women with low educational attainment it COULD BE that the Bible and church doctrine are there only sources of information on child rearing. Once they are educated women are making vastly different choices than church doctrine.