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Get Ready California : Latinos to Be Majority

15:32 H | Topics: California

The news that Latinos will become California's majority ethnic group isn't new news.

The state's last set of projections, in 2004, predicted it would happen by 2038, but the Finance Department adjusted its predictions to account for longer life expectancies that should keep more elderly whites around in future decades.

So Latinos will be the majority later, by 2042, according to new population projections released Monday. By 2050 52 percent of all Californians will be Latino, and whites will be just 26 percent of the population.

This of course is cause for concern on a number of levels (not including the "his-panic" that many whites may be experiencing)

One problem is that the state has more white voters compared to the general population. Will the whites that currently have numeric majority make positive decisions at the polls including more funding for educational opportunities for Latinos.

"There's going to be a racial generation gap occurring," said Bill Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He worries that white voters and corporate leaders in future decades will be "not as connected to the younger part of California, just simply because it's not their own children or their neighbors' children."

Contrary to popular beliefs (and fears), this Latino growth will not be because of immigration but rather by native children born to people who have immigrated here.

"Immigrants get a lot of attention because they are the newcomers, but the babies outweigh the immigrants by a substantial margin. In the future years, it looks to me like the number of Latino immigrants is really going to be leveling off.

That's right people. No invasion happening here.

Via / ContraCostaTimes

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