Socio-Economic Profile of Undocumented Immigrants and Their Economic Impact in the Central Coast California: Ventura & Santa Barbara Counties

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Presented By:

 Jamshid Damooei, Ph.D.

Executive Director of the Center for Economics of Social Issues (CESI), February 2023

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Information, Research Findings, and Ideas to Explore for Making Improvements

• Demographic Profile of Undocumented Immigrants in the Region

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• Looking for What is Real and Separating Them From Our Perceptions

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• Economic Impact of Undocumented Immigrants Within Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties

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• Economic Impact of Undocumented Immigrants in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties Within the State of California

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• The Strength of Our Interdependence and the Impossibility of Separating Undocumented from the Rest of the Economy

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• How Can We Bring Improvements?

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Size and Origin of Undocumented Immigrants

Years of Residency & Age Structure

Parental Status and School Enrollment

Health Insurance

Educational Attainment

Language Spoken at Home & English Language Isolation

Labor Market Information

Share of Undocumented Immigrants in Various Industries

Economic Impact of Undocumented Immigrants in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties Within the Region

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Method of Economic Impact Estimation

• We used the IMPLAN modeling platform to conduct our economic impact assessment.

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• MPLAN is a regional economic analysis software and data application designed to estimate the impact or ripple effect of a given economic activity or the contribution of some existing activity within a specific geographic area.

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In this study, we refer to several impacts as direct, indirect, and induced. What Are They?

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• Direct effects are the set of expenditures applied to the Input-Output multipliers for impact analysis. It is one or more production changes or payments made by producers/consumers due to an activity or policy. Direct effects can be positive or negative

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• Indirect effects are the business-to-business purchases in the supply chain taking place in the region that stem from the initial industry input purchases. As the industry specified spends its money in the region with its suppliers, this spending is shown through the indirect effect.

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• Induced effects are the values stemming from household spending of Labor Income after removing taxes, savings, and commuter income. The induced impacts are generated by the employees’ expenditure within the business’ supply chain.

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What Are the Economic Impacts?

• Output: In IMPLAN, Output is the value of production by industry in a calendar year. It can also be described as annual revenues plus net inventory change. The Output for wholesale and retail Industries represents their margin only; it does not represent revenues (sales).

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• Labor Income: Labor Income represents all forms of Employment income, including Employee Compensation (wages, salaries, and benefits) and Proprietor Income.

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• Employment: Employment in IMPLAN is an Industry-specific mix of full-time, part-time, and seasonal employment. It is an annual average that accounts for seasonality and follows the exact definition used by the BLS and BEA. IMPLAN Employment is not equal to full-time equivalents. It includes wage and salary employment and proprietors

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• Tax Revenue: In IMPLAN calculation, tax revenue is based on a rather elaborate calculation method. The tax impact report splits the TOPI tax (Taxes on Production & Imports Net of Subsidies) impacts into various categories within that region's economy. It does have industry-specific taxes paid (other than total TOPI, which is industry-specific), so the distribution will be an all-industry average. For more detailed information and technical notes, see the report.

Methods of Selecting Industries

We then used two filters that can help to select reasonable and, to a large extent, conservative in terms of educational requirements and annual wages/salaries paid in those industries.

• The data was selected from IMPLAN 546 industrial industry data breakdown using the combination of all industries in which the hourly pay is equal to $27 and educational attainment of 15% less than a high school diploma.
• In wholesale trade, we lowered the academic level to 10% less than a high school diploma. In professional services, we used educational attainment of 20% having a high school diploma or equivalent.
• Why These Filers?
• Educational Attainments are relatively lower among undocumented immigrants, as indicated before.

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Countywide Economic Impacts

Countywide Economic Impacts

Countywide Economic Impacts

Statewide Economic Impacts

Statewide Economic Impacts

Statewide Economic Impacts

The Strength of Our Interdependence and the Impossibility of Separating Undocumented from the Rest of the Economy �

What Can be Done At The County Level? �

Public policy options can be presented in three layers at the federal, state, and regional levels. Here we only offer regional policy options.

• Create a countywide or region-wide forum to discuss existing policy options and propose additional measures to support such efforts. This requires the focused attention of community leaders, government entities, and nonprofit institutions.
• An excellent example of this is currently going the creation of universal early childhood education called the Isabella Project in Santa Paula
• Protecting the lives of undocumented and helping them to find our counties safe and secure, we can discuss changing the status of our two counties and joining twenty other counties in the State of California and becoming Sanctuary counties for undocumented immigrants.
• Bringing attention to and providing resources for assisting undocumented immigrants to benefit from the existing provisions that can help them to take advantage of the current opportunity.
• Helping underserved communities to help themselves is a correct policy option. This requires reducing social and economic isolation in the needed community. English language isolation is a significant barrier that should be reduced to the extent possible

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What Can be Done At The County Level?

• Make supporting the existing DACA recipients a priority in every organization, college, and university and consider it an essential element of their DEIJ plans and initiatives.
• Look into possible ways and means of depression of wages and salaries for undocumented immigrants. This is a much broader topic that includes many minorities and women. The principle of equal pay for equal work needs to be protected and upheld. It should find its way to policy options and practices of all DEIJ in every government and non-government institution and check with empirical data every year. Annual progress should be recognized, and organizations should receive DEIJ recognition awards.
• Bring a much higher level of assistance from the nonprofit sector in support of this significant proportion of our regional community by creating a focus on undocumented immigrants.
• Increasing legal aid to undocumented immigrants.

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Thank You

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