On Thursday, May 7, more than 100 Napa Valley residents gathered at the Yountville Community Center for our latest Common Ground civic learning event — and for the unveiling of Rooted in the Valley: Immigrants in Napa County’s Communities and Economy, a comprehensive new report from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), funded by NVCF.
The event marked a milestone fourteen years in the making. In May 2012, in the very same room, we released MPI’s first-ever study of Napa County’s immigrant population — also funded by NVCF. That earlier report illuminated a community with an economy and demography that had shifted dramatically towards more immigrants living and working in the County than before, but where little local conversation existed about what those shifts might mean for our collective future and increasing political tensions, at a national level, over immigration and citizenship. As our President & CEO Terence Mulligan put it during his opening remarks, our intent back then was “to pick up the hot potato of immigration with the oven mitts of objective, third-party data.”
That study became the foundation for our One Napa Valley Initiative, a citizenship effort we launched in 2013 that has since helped nearly 3,000 local community members become U.S. citizens — thanks to the dedicated work of our grantee partners Immigration Institute of the Bay Area, On the Move, Puertas Abiertas Community Resource Center, and UpValley Family Centers, and the generosity of donors who have collectively invested nearly $4 million in the effort through the Foundation.
Now, fourteen years later, MPI has returned with a second-edition study — co-authored by Dr. Valerie Lacarte Ph.D., Michael Fix, and Allison Rutland, and once again commissioned by NVCF — that updates that original portrait and asks three questions: Who are Napa County’s immigrants and their children today? How do immigrants participate in the workforce? And what would it cost the local economy if immigrant workers could no longer fill certain jobs?
Dr. Lacarte, a Senior Policy Analyst at MPI, traveled from Washington, D.C. to share the findings. Here’s what we heard.
A Community with Deep Roots
Napa County is home to roughly 29,000 immigrants — about 21% of our total population of 135,000. Two-thirds were born in Latin America or the Caribbean, with Mexico the top sending country (57% of all immigrants). Another 23% were born in Asia, primarily the Philippines.
Three-quarters of immigrants in Napa County have lived in the United States for 20 years or more, and just 8% arrived in the last decade. In Dr. Lacarte’s words, our immigrant community has “settled down, started families, and become successfully incorporated into local communities.”
Other indicators reinforce that picture. 47% of all children in the county have at least one immigrant parent. 59% of K–12 students identify as Latino. And 48% of immigrants in Napa County are now naturalized U.S. citizens — up sharply from 30% in the 2012 report.
“That increase reflects the consistent naturalization assistance that has been provided here,” Dr. Lacarte said, “but there are other factors as well, including people moving out of the county.”
When we look at unauthorized immigration, we can see that about one quarter of Napa’s immigrants are unauthorized (~8,000 people), with some holding a temporary status offering work authorization and protection from deportation, such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or Temporary Protected Status (TPS). About 10,000 county residents with legal status live in mixed-status households (meaning, at least one other member of the household is an undocumented immigrant), and 4,000 of those are children — nine out of ten of whom are U.S. citizens themselves.
Immigrants in the Workforce
Napa County’s total workforce numbers about 70,000, and immigrants make up 29% of it — meaningfully overrepresented relative to their 21% share of the population. They work across nearly every industry, but cluster in five: manufacturing, health care, agriculture, accommodation and food services, and professional services.
Agriculture stands apart. While U.S.-born workers are the majority in most other job sectors, 71% of agricultural workers in Napa County are immigrants — and most have legal status. Naturalized citizens, green-card holders, and visa holders account for 44% of all ag workers, while unauthorized immigrants make up 27%.
A growing share of immigrants commute into the county to work. 38% of immigrant workers now live outside Napa County — many in Solano and Sonoma — a figure that has risen substantially since 2010. The number of immigrants who both live and work in the county has dropped by 11% over that same period. The high cost of housing is almost certainly a driving factor in this decrease.
Pay disparities are stark. Despite working full-time, year-round at higher rates than their U.S.-born counterparts, immigrant workers earn just 77 cents for every dollar U.S.-born workers earn.
What Immigrant Workers Contribute — and What Removing Them Would Cost
The most novel piece of the new study is an economic impact simulation. Using IMPLAN modeling software, MPI researchers asked: what would happen to Napa County’s economy if immigrant workers were removed from its wine and hospitality industry — defined here as agriculture, manufacturing, and accommodation and food services combined?
The findings were stark:
Immigrant workers contribute $1.5 billion annually to Napa County’s GDP — roughly 11% of our total economy. Removing them would also eliminate close to 15,000 jobs (more jobs than are held by immigrants alone, because losses ripple into linked sectors like, real estate, insurance, and warehousing) and erase $2.7 billion in industry sales.
A second scenario looked at removing only unauthorized immigrant workers. This would shrink local GDP by $366 million annually, eliminate roughly 4,300 jobs, and cost Napa County and its local jurisdictions more than $28 million per year in lost tax revenue — even under the conservative assumption that unauthorized immigrants pay no payroll taxes.
“Job losses in the wine and hospitality industry would have ripple effects across various sectors in the Napa County economy,” Dr. Lacarte emphasized. The negative impacts would extend well beyond unauthorized immigrants, affecting U.S.-born and lawfully present foreign-born workers alike.
What Local Actors Can Do
Dr. Lacarte closed with a set of recommendations grounded in the data — many of which are already well underway in Napa Valley:
- Continued naturalization assistance, with particular attention to Latino immigrants, who make up two-thirds of the long-settled population.
- Legal assistance for immigrants navigating an increasingly complex federal landscape, including those in mixed-status families and people in liminal statuses.
- English language and adult education investment, given that 52% of immigrants have limited English proficiency.
- Credential and skills recognition programs, especially for the 30% of immigrant women workers who hold a university degree.
- Health and nutrition access, as federal cuts to public benefits programs increase pressure on local safety nets.
- Further research into the role descendants of immigrants play in our community and workforce.
Throughout the evening, Terence was clear that our role at NVCF is not to take sides in the national debate but to ensure the local conversation is grounded in facts. He noted a tension worth sitting with: while many of the data points in the new report are encouraging, the underlying data runs only through 2023 — predating the heightened enforcement environment now reshaping immigrant communities across the country, and potentially driving more immigrants out of the region. “Simply put, there’s more work to be done.”
Dig Deeper
- Read the Rooted in the Valley: Immigrants in Napa County’s Communities and Economy report: Executive Summary or Full Report
- View Dr. Lacarte’s slides: In English or En español
- Watch the Recording:
