Workers harvest green leaf lettuce at Roth Farms on January 9, 2025 in western Palm Beach county, Florida.
San Diego, California – California is undergoing a significant transformation in its immigrant population, with a growing influx of high-skilled workers from Asia outpacing migration from Latin America. The trend, driven largely by the H-1B visa program, reflects a broader national shift toward skilled labor and has major implications for the state’s workforce and economy.
In 2023, 73% of all H-1B visas were granted to Indian nationals and 12% to Chinese nationals, according to the Pew Research Center. These highly educated workers are filling roles in California’s booming tech and knowledge-based industries, often employed by companies like Google, Meta, and Apple. In 2024 alone, nearly 79,000 H-1B visa holders came to California—over 14,000 of whom were sponsored by those three tech giants.
This marks a reversal in long-term immigration trends. In 1990, 56% of California’s immigrants were from Latin America and 32% from Asia. By 2022, those numbers had flipped: 46% were from Asia and only 38% from Latin America, according to the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC). The share of European immigrants also rose, from 5.5% to 10%.
California, home to 10.6 million immigrants—22% of the national total—still has the largest foreign-born population in the U.S. Today, 27% of the state’s residents were born outside the country, compared to the national average of 12%. Among prime working-age adults (25–54), one-third are foreign-born, and nearly half of all children in California have at least one immigrant parent.
Eric McGhee, policy director and senior fellow at PPIC, said the shift toward high-skilled Asian immigration is part of a larger pattern: “California has been a relatively popular destination for higher education, higher income workers, while losing middle and lower income workers to other states.”
While this trend benefits high-skill sectors like technology and health care, it also shows the challenges. With fewer lower-skilled immigrants arriving, industries dependent on manual labor may face shortages. McGhee warned that “robust future population growth will require addressing the broader affordability crisis that scares lower income workers away.”
Demographer Hans Johnson noted the long-term nature of these changes: “These changes are slow,” he said, “but California continues to evolve.” Connie Chung Joe, CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, added, “The fastest-growing racial groups in Los Angeles, California and this country are Asian Americans.”
As the state’s immigrant landscape changes, the future of federal immigration policy could shape the pace and scale of this transformation.
