Migration from California persists as migrant numbers increase in San Diego

The mass exodus of Californians fleeing the Golden State “could get even worse,” according to Newsweek, while San Diego ascends as the top entry point for illegal migrants to the United States.

According to data from moveBuddha, searches for exits out of California metro areas to a different state ranked five out of ten for the most popular searches for moving routes from Jan. 1 to May 17. The most popular search was from Los Angeles, California, to New York City, New York. But the second most popular search was from New York City to Miami, Florida.

Tom Vogl, a University of California San Diego associate economics professor, told Newsweek that the single biggest factor behind the trend was housing.

“All the data I’ve seen,” he said, “suggest that housing is the driving issue. A typical house in California costs twice as much as a typical house in Texas, the most common destination for California out-migrants. And when asked why they left, out-migrants are now much more likely to cite housing than other reasons like jobs and family, which wasn’t true in past decades.”

“The high cost of housing makes it hard to make ends meet in California. California,” he added, “is also the epicenter of homelessness in the U.S. The homelessness crisis is another byproduct of unaffordable housing as well as another push factor that may drive residents to leave.”

The moving data comes just as The New York Times reported on June 4 that San Diego, California, “for the first time in 25 years,” has “become a top destination for migrants along the southern United States border, surpassing the number of illegal crossings at areas in Arizona and Texas for several weeks this year, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.”

Ostensibly, the trend toward San Diego as a prime entry point for migrants comes as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has cracked down on illegal immigration.

Among those assisting the migrants in San Diego amid the influx is a mutual aid group called We All We Got San Diego. For months, the group has assisted stranded migrants at the airport by doling out meals and toiletries. However, with funding reduced, it now relies solely on donations.

“I cannot fathom,” Krystle Johnson, one of the organization’s volunteers, said, “how you could have 800 to a thousand people being released a day and have absolutely no county or government involvement, no federal, no city, no nothing.”

Johnson noted to The Times her frustration with leaders in Washington to deal with the border.

In San Diego, she said, “the biggest conversation is like, ‘Who should take care of it?’ And right now it’s nobody because everybody is arguing amongst themselves.”

On June 4, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that claims to temporarily suspend migrants from processing asylum claims at the southern border if the weekly average of unauthorized migrants exceeds 2,500.

However, if migrants sign up for the CBP One app, TSA can still grant them entry into the U.S., according to Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. Additionally, migrants who have been trafficked or have fears of returning to their home country, or as NPR puts it, are “victims of a severe form of trafficking,” can also wait out their asylum hearing in the U.S.

On Thursday, the Alabama secretary of state told Newsmax‘s Rob Schmitt that he’s uncovered proof that the Biden administration is registering illegal migrants to vote.

“We started asking some questions for where this voter registration card came from, but it led us down another path to basically discover that anyone that comes in contact with certain state agencies, whether or not they receive benefits or not, receives a voter registration form in the mail,” Allen said. “And we just find that appalling.”