Welcome to the California Immigrant Data Portal, a resource and progress tracker for immigrants and those serving immigrant communities across the state of California. This portal presents data and case studies that can be used to better understand and promote the well-being of immigrants, their families, and their communities.
Click here to see what's new on our site!
Data indicators are organized into four categories, which include general demographics and three additional categories based on a three-part definition of immigrant inclusion:
The data portal is a project of the University of Southern California's Equity Research Institute (ERI), formerly known as the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII). For more information about our institute, click here. For more analysis on current issues facing immigrants, visit our blog here. Stay up to date on upcoming California Immigrant Data Portal updates and webinars by subscribing to our mailing list here.
Our perspective on immigrant inclusion is anchored by three guiding principles:
For more on our guiding principles, click here.
Our Work
Data Summaries
Data Summaries
Looking for data for your county, city or local area? Access our data summaries tool to draw data for your community across a curated set of key indicators.
A special note:
While this website provides data on immigrant, migrant, and refugee communities, we recognize that California is home to Native Nations on whose land we are living. We want to challenge the uplifting but inaccurate narrative that the state was “built by immigrants.” Instead, we want to acknowledge that the land we reside on was taken by a settler-colonial society that exploited native, immigrant, migrant, and enslaved people – stealing labor, knowledge, and skills – to build what we now call California. Today, California is home to the largest population of Native Americans in the United States. Currently there are over 150 tribes throughout the state. Immigrant communities, like U.S.-born Californians, must grapple with what it means to live on stolen land, understand our role and responsibilities as guests on Native American homelands, and be committed to supporting the struggle for Native Nations’ sovereignty and self-determination.
For more information on California’s Native Nations, click here.
Thank you for visiting our site! While not comprehensive in scope, this site is meant to provide general data and narrative on immigrant populations, who are often people of color. Highlighting some of the demographic and economic realities facing our communities now, the data also points to the state’s future and the work needed to shape immigrant inclusion for the next decade and beyond. We hope that this data portal is a helpful tool in your work and beyond.
April 2024: Our ERI team has been working on improvements to the site, including updating data, integrating new site features and adding new indicators. There’s a lot of information on the site so here are a few quick tips on how to make the most of your time on the California Data Portal.
- Head over to our new How to Use page to learn more about how our site works and to access tutorials on how to make the most of the data we have available on our site.
- To find data by topic, click on the Indicators header at the top of our site. Check out our updated Economic Contributions and Demographics indicators!
- To learn more about immigrant communities beyond the numbers, go to our new Data Hub page at the top of our site and select Narratives and Perspectives. On this page you will find brief stories highlighting important issues facing immigrant communities as well as stories about organizations working on behalf of immigrant communities and some key policies and programs that are improving the lives of California’s immigrant communities.
- Want some data that we don’t have on the website? Need additional help accessing our data tools? Reach out to us at eri@dornsife.usc.edu.
Below are a few indicators on our site:
Although seeking asylum is a human right, in the past few years, U.S. policy changes continue to restrict this right at the southern border, affecting many immigrants, in particular, Black immigrants, continuing the history of racism and exclusion inherent in immigration policy.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, between 2020 and 2022, the federal government used a little-known section of U.S. health law called “Title 42” to deny refugees and asylum seekers entry to the U.S. under the pretense of public health concerns. Although public health experts insisted that public health protocols could be enacted to safely process the entry of refugees and asylum seekers, Title 42 continued to be enforced under the Biden administration with some modifications. This contributed to the deportations of hundreds of thousands of Central American, Haitian, and Mexican immigrants who are denied the right to apply for asylum. Indeed, in 2021, the Haitian Bridge Alliance, The Quixote Center, and The UndocuBlack Network published, The Invisible Wall, a report detailing the history of Title 42 and the life-threatening impacts on Haitian immigrants. However, this is not the first time that Black migrants have been systematically excluded from pathways to immigration—an article by The Washington Post details this long history of exclusion.
In 2023, the Biden administration announced a new method of entry into the U.S. for asylum seekers through the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) App, requiring certain immigrants to submit their information and schedule appointments at ports of entry. Yet, the app has been plagued by issues including: disproportionate rejections of photos of migrants with darker skin tones; lack of access to the technology and connectivity required to download the app; and system errors that prevent users from submitting their information. Further, when the Title 42 order ended in May 2023, the Biden Administration established the “Circumvention of Lawful Pathways Rule” or the asylum transit ban, a new process at the border to manage immigration that advocates have criticized as dangerous and harmful. Legal advocates sued to stop implementation of the regulation that blatantly bans most asylum seekers from entry. However, the regulation remains in place while the case works its way through the courts.
Additionally, in early 2024, the U.S. senate attempted–and failed–to pass a “bipartisan” border bill that would overhaul the asylum system and according to advocates and organizers, “disproportionately impact Black migrants.” In early 2024, advocates and service providers continued to call on the current administration not to restrict asylum as his predecessor did, but instead establish a more humane and effective system that does not jeopardize migrants’ safety. To learn more about the recent asylum policy changes under Biden, read a New York Times article here. To read more about the impact of asylum transit ban on youth, see Immigrant Legal Resource Center’s fact sheet here.
Photo credit: Haitian Bridge Alliance
