Buenos dias California!

UNESCO Courier, Nov, 1998 by Harry P. Pachon

It is time to debunk the myths surrounding California's large and growing Latino immigrant population

California: land of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Disneyland and movie stars - this has been the popular conception of the names and symbols associated with the US's largest state for the better part of this century. Yet there is another California which co-exists alongside this glamorous and popular image. Cities like Monterey Park, Huntington Park and areas like East Los Angeles are the new ports of entry for immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Asia and the rest of the world. This less glamorous aspect of California is not as well known. Nonetheless, the ways in which California adapts and adjusts to being the first home of new immigrants will be critical in the twenty-first century for the state's future, and perhaps for the future of the United States. Most notably, California will give the country a glimpse of the future as it moves from a biracial (black/white) understanding of minority issues to a multi-cultural perspective that encompasses predominantly Latinos as well as Asian Americans and African Americans.

Historically, the United States has defined minority group concerns in terms of a black and white dynamic.Yet in California the black community is actually the smallest of the minority populations. Latinos and Asians, both native-born and immigrant, are the largest minorities in the state. And this trend will continue. The Latino population(1) in California is growing ten times as fast as the African American community and twice as fast as the Asian American community.

Consider these additional facts. California, with 27 million inhabitants, is the USA's most populous state and has the world's seventh largest economy. It is also a state with incredible ethnic diversity: in 1990 there were over six million foreign-born immigrants living there. The number of Mexican immigrants living in Los Angeles County could make it the third largest Mexican metropolitan area outside of Mexico. Moreover, there are over half a million Salvadorians and Guatemalans also living in southern California. According to the US Census, there are also over two million immigrants from Asian countries living in the state, the largest of them, the Chinese and Korean, numbering over 200,000 each.

Kosher burritos, pupuserias and Chinese seafood

These immigrants and native-born Americans provide a richness of cultures that are blending and coalescing in ways that are not yet fully clear. For example, you can eat "kosher burritos(2)" in downtown Los Angeles and Salvadorian restaurants featuring "pupuserias(3)" co-exist alongside Chinese seafood eateries. Los Angeles city schools teach bilingual classes in Armenian as well as Spanish. In Los Angeles there are two Asian language and three Spanish language television stations. One Spanish language television evening news show has a larger audience than any English language television station. The entrepreneurial vitality of California is constantly enriched thanks to a blend of Asian capital and the large Latin American labour force.

Yet the presence and magnitude of such a large immigrant population has created a backlash among native California voters, most of whom are neither of Latin American nor Asian descent. In the 1990s, California has had statewide votes on initiatives that would deny schooling and other social services to children of undocumented immigrants. Most recently, the state passed an initiative that would eliminate bilingual education for immigrant children.

The basis for these initiatives has been largely driven by the negative stereotypes surrounding immigrants from Mexico and Central America. According to these stereotypes, Mexican and Central American immigrants are predominantly illegal, do not fully participate in the labour force and are not adapting to American culture by not learning English.

The facts present a different picture. According to the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, immigrants from Latin America have constituted over 30 per cent of the entire number of immigrants to the United States in the past three decades. The primary destination of these legal immigrants from Mexico and Central America has been California. For example, close to 50 per cent of all Mexican immigrants list California as their destination. When one looks at the percentage of immigrants participating in the labour force, the facts also contradict the stereotypes. Mexican and Central American immigrants have labour force participation (62 per cent) that equals, if not exceeds, that of the white non-Hispanic labour force and far exceeds that of native African Americans. A number of other facts help explain the Latino immigrant community in California.

Firstly, it is a complex community. The city of Los Angeles was founded in 1781 by Spain. Some Latinos, albeit a small minority in California, can trace their ancestry in the United States back over many generations. Most of California's Latinos are recent immigrants, however. Over half of the state's Latino adult population is foreign-born.