California is not only gaining illegal aliens; it’s still losing native Californians

Right before Christmas, California proudly boasted that those who pointed to its shrinking population as proof that its leftist policies are a disaster were wrong. The California population, they said, is back! However, the missing detail was that the growth came from outside the U.S. (read: illegal aliens). Now, there’s further evidence that Americans want nothing to do with California, including Californians themselves.

Right before Christmas, a Los Angeles Times article announced that “California’s population grew by almost a quarter of a million residents in 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, a rebound that brings the state almost back to its pre-pandemic numbers.” The implication, of course, was that former residents were coming back home and that residents of other states were finding their way to the leftist glories of the “Golden State.”

Image by Grok

However, the devil is (as always) in the details. In the 12th paragraph, the LA Times essay admitted that the growing population “stems largely from international migration and natural population increases...not domestic migration.”

My take was then (and continues to be today), that the “international migration” is of the illegal variety. If Trump starts deporting California’s new immigrants because they’re here illegally, expect what H. Ross Perot once memorably described it as a “giant sucking sound.” That’ll be the illegal alien population draining hard and fast back to south of the border, down Mexico way.

Today, U-Haul confirmed that legal Americans aren’t moving to California:

 

However, it’s not just that people aren’t coming to California. It’s also that Californians are still leaving as fast as they can:

 

U-Haul has a new report out and once again – for the fifth year in a row – the once Golden State finished on top of the U-Haul Growth Index – meaning more Californians rented one-way U-Haul trucks to leave the state in 2024, than residents of any other state.

When I look at what Gavin Newsom and his buddies have done to California, the lovely state in which I grew up and the fading state in which I raised my children, all I can think of is Bones McCoy in the original Star Trek series, saying some variation of “He’s dead, Jim.” 

California is dead. The Americans who built it over the last 170 years are gone, replaced by people who are takers, not builders, who have no concept of constitutional liberty, and who have no love for this country.  

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/01/california_is_not_only_gaining_illegal_aliens_it_s_still_losing_native_californians.html