The saying “as goes California, so goes the nation” helps to illustrate California’s outsized political and cultural influence on the overall trajectory of the United States. From environmental regulations to the civil rights revolution, California has long served as a proving ground for national trends.
If this pattern continues, the recent anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles featuring protestors burning cars, attacking police and ICE agents, and proudly waving Mexican flags represent more than just “local disturbances;” they serve as a stark warning to the rest of the country signaling that the United States is at both an immigration breaking point and a demographic tipping point.
In his book, “The Stakes,” author Michael Anton details how “California was the greatest middle-class paradise in the history of mankind. Yet, in barely one generation, that California was swept away and transformed into a left-liberal one-party state.”
LOS ANGELES, LOS ANGELES – JUNE 08: A protestor holds up a Mexican flag as burning cars line the street on June 08, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. Tensions in the city remain high after the Trump administration called in the National Guard against the wishes of city leaders following two days of clashes with police during a series of immigration raids. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
How did this happen? The change was primarily driven by demographic shifts.
In 1960, approximately 92% of Californians identified as white; today, that number has dropped to just 34%. At the same time, 27% of the state’s population is now foreign-born.
At the city level, the transformation is even more pronounced: in Los Angeles, the site of today’s ongoing riots, more than 35% of the city’s population is foreign-born, and nearly 47% identify as Hispanic or Latino. (RELATED: Trump Admin Gives One More Big Incentive For Illegal Migrants To Self-Deport)
In the 1980s, California was a state that Ronald Reagan swept in consecutive elections. Today, it is a permanently blue state due to illegal and legal immigration, which, ironically, exploded after Reagan passed an immigration bill in 1986 that granted amnesty to nearly 3 million illegal immigrants.
This is why Democrats are fighting for “a pathway to citizenship” for the often cited “11 million” (but really 22+ million) illegal immigrants in the United States. While “legal” Latino immigrant voters shifted slightly more to Trump in 2024, Democrats understand that if they can add 22 million (or more) new voters who would primarily vote for the Democratic Party, then they could effectively establish a one-party United States as they have cemented in the state of California.
While Reagan’s amnesty was devastating, America’s dramatic demographic shift was also driven by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, otherwise known as the Hart-Celler Act.
The Hart-Celler Act brought about a profound transformation in U.S. immigration policy. It marked a departure from the national origins quota system, which had predominantly favored European countries, and ushered in a new era of global immigration from the Third World.
Of course, this is not how the legislation was sold.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed the law, stated, “The legislation we are enacting today is not a groundbreaking measure. It won’t significantly impact the lives of millions, nor will it drastically alter the framework of our daily existence or make substantial contributions to our wealth or influence.
Senator Ted Kennedy added, “It will not disrupt the ethnic composition of our society.”
History has proven them both wrong.
In 1960, the vast majority of legal immigrants to the United States, about 84%, came from Europe or Canada. Just 6% were from Mexico, 4% from South and East Asia, another 4% from Latin America, and only 2% from other parts of the world. This reflected a historically Eurocentric immigration pattern that had persisted for generations, shaped by earlier immigration laws that heavily favored Western countries. (RELATED: Trump DHS Lists More Criminal Illegals It Nabbed In LA Raids)
By 2018, that picture had changed dramatically. Asian immigrants made up around 30% of the legal immigrant population, 23% were born in Mexico, 25% came from Latin America more broadly, and 9% hailed from other regions such as Africa and the Middle East.
Immigrants from Europe or Canada now account for just 12%, a staggering 72% decline since 1960. And it’s essential to keep in mind that these figures only account for legal immigration; the vast majority of illegal immigrants come from Central America, South America, and Mexico, which further skews the overall immigrant demographics in favor of those from the third world.
As a consequence, the number of foreign-born individuals living in the United States reached an all-time high of 53.3 million in 2025, comprising 15.8% of the total U.S. population, up from 4.7% in 1970.
If all that sounds bad, it gets worse.
Due to the United States’ policy of birthright citizenship, once any illegal alien has children on U.S. soil, that child is now automatically an American citizen, which all but guarantees that no one from that family is getting deported. Once these new immigrant families are established in America, U.S. family reunification policy takes over, providing a foothold for subsequent immigration to America through their family networks.
This is what’s known as “chain migration.”
This has all the makings of a complete and wholesale cultural replacement. Of course, you’re not allowed to notice this, as doing so would cause leftists to recoil in horror at the mere idea that you even considered these statistics unfavorable. After all, “diversity is our strength.”
Michael Anton laid out the demographic reality that Americans and the West face in his essay at the New Criterion titled “Unprecedented.”
“The ‘Great Replacement’ is happening, not just in America but throughout the West. Elites both deny and affirm it. When they write op-eds in The New York Times entitled ‘We Can Replace Them,’ that’s a good thing, and the phenomenon under discussion is absolutely right and just. When you notice and express the mildest wish not to be replaced, it’s a racist conspiracy theory that you are evil for even mentioning—your evil being further proof that you deserve to be replaced. They get to say it; you’re required not merely to pretend that you didn’t hear it but also to insist that they never said it. No majority stock in any nation has ever deliberately sought its own replacement, much less insisted that those who might have misgivings lie to themselves that it’s not happening.”
The riots in Los Angeles are not an anomaly; they are a forecast, and only the beginning of a nationwide pushback on the Trump administration’s attempt at enforcing federal immigration law. The chaos and destruction seen in Los Angeles is a precursor of what’s to come if the nation follows California’s demographic and political trajectory. (RELATED: ‘A Bad Day To Be An Illegal Alien’: Border Enforcement Wins Rack Up Under Trump Admin)
America’s immigration crisis, playing out in the streets of Los Angeles, is a crisis of national and cultural sovereignty. Without strict immigration enforcement, mass deportations, an end to chain migration, and a reassessment of birthright citizenship laws, we are headed toward permanent political realignment, civic disintegration, and a permanent loss of national identity.
This article was originally published at dailycaller.com
