These five charts explain immigration in the Bay Area and California

The United States is a nation of immigrants and California even more so with twice the national percentage of immigrants Just over a quarter of California s roughly million residents were born elsewhere but in a large number of parts of the Bay Area immigrants account for over a third of the population Santa Clara County has the state s highest proportion of immigrants with of residents born outside of the country San Mateo San Francisco and Alameda counties are next on the list with between and immigrants All four of those Bay Area counties have a higher rate of immigrants than Los Angeles County where one-third of residents are immigrants While immigration raids in Los Angeles have dominated the news with President Donald Trump making good on campaign promises to increase immigration enforcement the Bay Area s population is also especially vulnerable to changes in immigration policies including H -B visa policies and other changes to federal framework because of the large immigrant population While the U S Census Bureau s American Region Survey does not collect evidence on the legal status of non-citizens a analysis from the Migration Strategy Institute estimates that as of of immigrants in the country were naturalized citizens had permanent legal status or were on temporary work visas The remaining of immigrants in the country are unauthorized according to the summary In Fremont and Sunnyvale half of residents were born outside of the United States Only one of California s largest cities has a higher percentage of immigrants Glendale a city in Los Angeles County adjacent to Griffith Park that is known for its large Armenian population Around the Golden State there are just over million naturalized U S citizens people who were born elsewhere but now have U S citizenship And there are nearly million people living in California who are not citizens including those here temporarily those with work authorization those seeking asylum and those without formal authorization We also know that the Bay Area gets a disproportionate number of the country s H -B visa beneficiaries mostly highly skilled workers especially in tech In part due to the region s high number of immigrant tech workers Santa Clara County has a higher proportion of both naturalized U S citizens and non-citizens compared to other counties in the region And the number of non-citizens has grown by since more than in any other Bay Area county In San Francisco Solano Marin Sonoma and Napa counties there are now fewer non-citizen residents than in while San Mateo Contra Costa Alameda and Santa Clara counties have more non-citizens than years before Around the country there are now about million immigrants more than ever before Proportionally immigrants now make up nearly of the nation s residents similar to the rate in the late s In the first part of the th century the share of U S residents who were immigrants dropped to just over by but that figure has been growing consistently since then Statewide Mexico is by far the bulk common country of birth among immigrants but the share of immigrants from our neighbor to the south is shrinking In there were million people living in California who were born in Mexico Now that total is million Coming in second on the list is the Philippines where over California residents were born Another nearly residents were born in China and India was fourth on the list in moving steadily up the ranks over the past decade In the Bay Area immigrants are coming from different places than a decade ago In the number of Indian immigrants in Santa Clara and Alameda counties surpassed the number of residents born in Mexico