Nearly one quarter of Santa Barbara County residents are immigrants, only a third are legal citizens, and about one half of all children in the county have at least one immigrant parent. These immigrants, especially those from Latino or Asian backgrounds, tend to be more consistently employed than nonimmigrants and contribute 25 percent to the county’s gross domestic product.
Those are just some of the statistics released this week by the California Immigrant Policy Center, which analyzed Santa Barbara County as well as five other counties as part of a report called “Looking Forward: Immigrant Contributions to the Golden State.”
“The report shows that immigrant workers are the backbone of key industries in California; they are innovators, entrepreneurs, active community members, community leaders,” explained the center’s executive director Reshma Shamasunder in a statement. “The story of California is one of successes won through hard work, through a knowledge that we are interdependent, diverse, tolerant and that these values help make our state stronger and more unified.”
To read the full report, click here, and see the attached PDF for the specific data on Santa Barbara County.