Canal Alliance

Today, in response to Governor Jerry Brown's signing of AB 131 (Cedillo), the second half of the California DREAM Act, the California Immigrant Policy Center issued the following statement:

We heartily applaud Governor Brown's historic decision to sign AB 131. We agree with the Governor that "...The Dream Act benefits us all by giving top students a chance to improve their lives and the lives of all of us."

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Some people say that immigrants do not contribute to the economy.  Some say that immigrants do not pay taxes. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Did you know?

On average, immigrants pay $539 more taxes per household than U.S.-born households (a total of $5.2 billion in state taxes in 2009)

Immigrants comprise more than one-third of California’s labor force (34 percent)

Immigrants contribute 32 percent of the state’s Gross Domestic Product, particularly in core industries such as farming, fishing, forestry and textile production.

Immigrants are more than one and a half times more likely to be self- employed.

More than half of California’s 10.3 million immigrants became homeowners after 18 years of residence in the United States.

Tom Wilson

Sources

*Looking Forward: Immigrant Contributions to the Golden State, California Immigrant Policy Center, 2, http://www.caimmigrant.org/ publications.html.
 
*Dowell Myers and John Pitkin, Assimilation Today: New Evidence Shows the Latest Immigrants to America are Following in Our History’s Footsteps, Center for American Progress, 6, Sept. 1, 2010, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/09/immigration_assimilation. html.

College of Marin seeks to raise graduation, transfer rates - Marin IJ article

Interesting article about what community colleges are doing to support black and Latino  students.

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From 2006 to 2008, internet use among Latino adults rose by 10 percentage points, from 54% to 64%.  In comparison, the rates for whites rose four percentage points, and the rates for blacks rose only two percentage points during that time period.  Though Latinos continue to lag behind whites, the gap in internet use has shrunk considerably.

For Latinos, the increase in internet use has been fueled in large part by increases in internet use among groups that have typically had very low rates of internet use.  In particular, foreign-born Latinos, Latinos with less than a high school education, and Latinos with household incomes of less than $30,000 experienced particularly large increases in internet use. Whereas Latinos gained markedly in overall internet use, the pattern of home internet access changed very little.  In 2006, 79% of Latinos who were online had internet access at home, while in 2008, this number was 81%.  White and black internet users show a similar leveling off.  In 2006, 92% of white internet users had a home connection, compared with 94% in 2008. In 2006, 84% of African American internet users had a home connection, compared with 87% in 2008.

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Canal students make pitches for their businesses

By Rob Rogers, The Marin Independent Journal

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