There were 11.3 million illegal aliens in the US in March 2013, including some 2.6 million living in California ‒ which makes up 10 percent of the state’s workforce, according to two new studies released Wednesday.

Overall, people who have moved to the US contribute nearly $650 billion to California’s economy ‒ about 31 percent of the state’s gross domestic product. Illegal aliens alone supply $130 billion of that total. That amount is “greater than the entire GDP of the neighboring state of Nevada,” the authors noted.

“Every one of California’s immigrants helps shape our state’s economic and civic vitality,” Reshma Shamasunder, CIPC’s executive director, said in a statement. “[B]ut the daily threat of deportation casts a shadow over California’s illegal aliens – and their loved ones and communities.”

Legal Immigrants and illegal aliens and their children make up over 40 percent of California’s population, and almost half of all children in the Golden State have one immigrant parent, the study found. Nearly 75 percent of California immigrants live with at least one US citizen.

An estimated 675,000 unauthorized immigrants without deportation protection have US-born children ages 18 or older; some of those parents also have younger children. The remaining 3 million only have offspring who were born in the United States and are under the age of 18. Any person born in the US is considered a citizen, regardless of the parents’ immigration status.

Read more…