The Growing Pains of Diversity: California as a Case Study

Last night, I happened upon this article, which discussed California's history with immigrants and legislation relating to those immigrants.

In summary, California had a tumultuous history when it comes to immigrants. It was Chinese immigration mostly to California that led the United States to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act, and it was the governor of California who was a major proponent of Japanese internment camps. The state then went through a reactionary phase during the 1990s in which governor Pete Wilson, running on anti-immigration rhetoric was elected and Prop 187, which banned illegal immigrants from getting any government benefits or public education, which was later struck down by the courts. But later, especially in the last 5-10 years, the state has undergone a significant shift in terms of politics; after a period in which growing numbers of immigrants led to backlash and more right-wing politics, it has begun to embrace them.

The author argued that this could be true of the country as a whole. According to research cited in the article, while in the short term increasing exposure to immigrants lead to more anti-immigrant sentiments, in the long term, such exposure lessened anti-immigrant sentiments below where they were initially. We could be in the initial phase of that phenomenon - the areas where immigrants have been moving to the fastest are the very Rust Belt and rural areas that switched parties from Democratic to Republican, specifically for Trump. The article predicts that given some time, that this too will pass, and the Democratic "demographics destiny" may come true after all, at least until the Republicans adapt to the new attitudes.

What are your thoughts?