The Abridged version:
- The number of foreign-born workers in the Sacramento region has grown dramatically, affecting key industries as deportations increase. Industries that rely on non-citizen workers include agriculture, roofing, carpentry and housekeeping.
- A quarter of workers in the four-county region were born outside the United States, a higher rate of foreign-born workers than the nationwide average.
- Immigrant workers in Sacramento earned a total of about $18 billion in wages in 2023, census data show. Of that total, about $5.1 billion was earned by non-citizen immigrants.
- Aggressive immigration enforcement causes fear and anxiety among non-citizen immigrant workers, social workers say.
The Sacramento region has long been viewed as a hub and safe haven for immigrants.
The area boasts some of the largest populations of Afghan, Ukrainian and Hmong residents in America, a product of a robust refugee resettlement infrastructure. A substantial number of people born in Mexico, Central America, China, India, Russia, Vietnam, Laos, Fiji and in the Philippines also call Sacramento home.
Most of those immigrants work, and the region’s economy largely depends on foreign-born workers. About 25%, or 289,000, of the four-county area’s employed workers were born outside the United States, a higher rate of foreign-born workers than the nationwide average, according to 2023 census data.
Around 107,000 of those local workers are not citizens, and roughly 61,000 undocumented workers are in the area’s labor force, according to a recent analysis by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute and the University of California, Merced.
Now, that vital segment of the region’s population is fearful of being deported amid the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement actions.
Aggressive immigration enforcement sparks fear
Arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have jumped across the state. Federal officials say they are targeting individuals with criminal backgrounds, though most immigrants in detention have no criminal conviction, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
In late July, federal immigration officials arrested 12 people – including a U.S. citizen who allegedly tried to interfere — in a Home Depot parking lot on Florin Road in Sacramento.
“Even folks who you might think of as having more of a stable immigration status still feel the anxiety,” said Jessie Mabry, chief executive officer at Opening Doors, a nonprofit that provides support to immigrants and refugees. “ I think there’s a real palpable sense of, ‘I may be safe today. But will I be tomorrow?’”
Foreign-born workforce in region has grown dramatically
The foreign-born workforce in the Sacramento region grew by about 40% from 2005 to 2023, double the rate of growth of the native-born workforce.
Nearly all local industries have a high proportion of foreign-born workers but some could be hit especially hard by enforcement actions.
Almost half of the region’s roofers are non-citizens, the latest census figures show. So are almost half of the region’s agricultural workers and more than a quarter of its housekeepers, carpenters and taxi drivers. More than one in 10 of the region’s workers in the transportation, warehousing and manufacturing industries are non-citizens.
About 22,000, or more than 25%, of the region’s construction workers are immigrants, census data show. Roughly 12,500 of them are not citizens.
Housing construction workforce stable for now, industry says
“The issue in California is housing,” Mabry said. “And what are we going to do about our housing supply? How do you do that without a construction workforce?”
Tim Murphy, president and CEO of the North State Building Industry Association, said that his organization had informally surveyed members and found that most of them had not experienced significant changes to hiring and retention due to new immigration enforcement efforts.
“What impacts have been observed seem to be largely among general laborers,” Murphy said in a statement. “Builders and trade contractors do not appear to be seriously concerned at this point but are monitoring the situation closely.”
Non-citizens concentrated in some region neighborhoods
Most of the region’s foreign-born non-citizens arrived in America more than a decade ago, census figures show.
“These are people who have long standing ties to not just their communities, but often their employers,” said Abby Raisz, Vice President of Research at the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. “It would take decades to even get to the point of institutional knowledge that a lot of these workers have, and a lot of them are doing high level work”
As certain industries could be hit hard by an immigration crackdown, so could particular neighborhoods.
More than one-third of the roughly 15,000 residents in West Sacramento’s 95605 ZIP code are immigrants, and about 18% of the ZIP code’s population are not citizens.
About 25,000 immigrants live in South Sacramento’s 95823 ZIP code, comprising 30% of the area’s population. Almost 12,000 of them are not citizens.
Coming to Sacramento from all over the world
While Mexico is the most common birthplace of non-citizen immigrant workers who arrived many years ago, more recent immigrants have come from a wider variety of places.
Workers born in Asia represent, by far, the largest group of non-citizens in Sacramento who came to America from 2014 through 2023, and a growing number of immigrants were born in Central America.
“Most of the people now coming in that are undocumented are from visa overstays, more so than border crossings,” said Raisz.
Immigrant earnings help support regional economy
Immigrant workers in Sacramento earned a total of about $18 billion in wages in 2023, census data show. Of that total, about $5.1 billion was earned by non-citizen immigrants.
That much money likely supports thousands of local jobs, as immigrants spend at local stores and restaurants and purchase services like auto repairs and hair cuts.
“We actually are seeing workers will eventually return to the workplace, even with that fear instilled,” Raisz said. “What they won’t do is go out to bars, go out to restaurants, go out and take their kids to the park.”
Without undocumented immigrants, California’s economic output would shrink about 9%, or by about $278 billion, after accounting for direct and indirect costs, Raisz said.
And the Sacramento metro area’s population would have shrunk last year without immigration. The region saw a net gain of 11,000 immigrants, while its population only grew by 8,000, dragged down by low birth rates and people leaving for other U.S. states.
“A population that’s steady is what fuels our economic growth,” Raisz said. “So if you don’t have people living here to actually do the jobs, then they will get outsourced, or (people) will just move.”
Phillip Reese is a regular contributor, writing Numbers Matter for Abridged.