Los Angeles politicians have long dreamt of their city overtaking New York as North America’s dominant economic centre. Yet if LA is now becoming more like New York, it is for entirely the wrong reasons.
Radical anti-ICE protests that began last month have continued into July in California. This fury has only been exacerbated by the death on Friday of a man who was injured during an ICE raid on a cannabis farm. With nearly a million undocumented migrants living in LA, the city has become a natural setting for these demonstrations, while Mayor Karen Bass is seemingly opposed to any efforts to enforce immigration laws. The largely youthful demonstrators have habitually broken laws, attacked police, and set fire to Waymo vehicles. Radicals hail what they call “a student intifada”. One local political leader has even suggested the city’s notorious gangs join the fight against ICE officers.
How did it come to this? The decline of the higher-end economy has left LA’s roughly 50% Latino population in a dire state. The city was once a beacon of opportunity for migrants, but Latino incomes, adjusted for cost of living, and homeownership rates are among the lowest in the nation. LA’s poverty rates are the highest of anywhere in California and among the worst in the country, and it’s the immigrants who suffer most. One study from last year found that 41% of undocumented migrants under the age of 26 live in poverty. Undocumented households have a median income of $46,500, compared to $75,000 among all Angelenos.
What’s more, LA now suffers from a low-wage/high-welfare model, dependent on poorly-paid immigrants who rely on government support. The Congressional Budget Office warned last year that the “massive surge in immigration” in recent years will impact the salaries of low-income US workers, who compete with newcomers for living space, jobs and social services.
All this is a tragedy for the city, but a boon for Left-wing politicians. The Democratic Socialists of America, of which Zohran Mamdani is a member, already hold four seats on LA’s 15-seat city council. Backed by the all-powerful public employee unions, they have been able to apply pressure on the hapless Bass.
Read the rest of this piece at: UnHerd.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: Luke Harold, via Flickr, Public Domain.
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