“Right now, one-third of all illegal aliens are going to California.”
Pat Buchanan in comments July 17 on Fox News
The Golden State went from red to blue thanks to an influx of immigrants, which is a cautionary tale for the national conservative agenda, GOP pundit Pat Buchanan says.
Buchanan noted July 17 on Fox News’ “The Sean Hannity Show” that California Republicans are now outnumbered 2-to-1 in the state Legislature, 2-to-1 in Congress, and that no Republican holds a statewide office.
“Right now, one-third of all the illegal aliens go to California. Take a look at California politically, which Richard Nixon carried five times and Ronald Reagan carried in four landslides,” he said. “And when the country looks like California demographically, it’s gonna look like California politically.”
PunditFact, an affiliate of PolitiFact, wanted to check Buchanan’s claim that one-third of the country’s illegal immigrants are Cali-bound.
To the redwood forests
Buchanan did not respond when we asked where he got his numbers, so we can’t know for sure.
There’s really no good data on immediate destinations — where unauthorized immigrants are going initially — said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Research Center. He said that though immigrants are more mobile than native-born residents, the general trend is that fewer immigrants are going to California first.
There’s also no way to know exactly how many unauthorized immigrants reside in the United States, wrote Kevin Johnson, the dean of public interest law at the University of California-Davis. Most reports and experts agree that the number is somewhere between 11 million and 12 million.
So based on the estimates we have, where are unauthorized immigrants living?
In 2012, the Department of Homeland Security reported that 25 percent of illegal immigrants live in California. Texas came in second with 16 percent.
The estimates rely on U.S. Census Bureau data, which attempts to measure everyone living in the country, measured against data on legal immigrants from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State. The Department of Homeland Security warns in its report that its state-to-state estimates may be affected by state-to-state migration (i.e. someone lives in California at the time of the census but moved elsewhere later).
Another report, from Pew, has a slightly lower estimate. In 2013, Pew reported that 21 percent of the nation’s illegal immigrants lived in California, a rate that Pew says has held steady since 2010. That’s a sharp decline from 1990, when Pew said that 42 percent of all unauthorized immigrants lived in California. Texas came in second in this report as well, at 14.5 percent.
Both these reports, we should note, measure where unauthorized immigrants are living. Buchanan said they are “going” there after crossing the border.
“Maybe, I’m speculating here, (Buchanan’s number) can refer to the immigrants first going into California and then moving to other states? I haven’t seen any reports that suggest that, though,” said Manuel Pastor, a co-director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Study of Immigration Integration.
While California is taking in more unauthorized immigrants than other states, its share has been dropping, experts say. Passel said this is because of the state’s recession in the mid-1990s, which led to immigrants seeking jobs in “new destination areas” such as Texas.
Party lines
Though not specifically part of this fact check, it’s important to note that Buchanan is mixing apples and oranges when he suggests illegal immigrants are directly affecting election outcomes. Illegal immigrants cannot vote. Neither can legal immigrants until they are naturalized. And there are almost no reports in California of unlawful voting by noncitizens, Johnson said.
The one situation that most directly could affect an election would be if two illegal immigrant parents have a child in the United States. That child would be a legal U.S. citizen and would be eligible to vote when he or she turns 18.
On politics, it’s hard to see a direct correlation simply between the number of illegal immigrants and election results.
California voted Republican for president from 1968 to 1988 and has voted Democratic from 1992 to 2012. Of the state’s last six elected governors, three were Republicans and three were Democrats. In Texas, which has the second-highest share of unauthorized immigrants, Republicans have won the past nine presidential elections and served as governor for 27 out of the past 35 years.
The ruling
Buchanan said, “Right now, one-third of all illegal aliens are going to California.”
While experts say no good account for initial destinations of illegal immigrants exists, the most reliable estimates of immigrants living illegally in California range between 21 percent and 25 percent.
That’s a bit lower than what Buchanan said. We rate his claim Half True.
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