Legal Immigration to State Up by 23%, Report Finds : Population: More than half the newcomers are from Asia. The state now has 31.5 million people.

Legal foreign immigration to California jumped 23% last year to more than 235,000, with more than half the newcomers hailing from Asia and another big share of the increase resulting from greater immigration from Mexico, according to the state Finance Department.

The immigration, thought to constitute a record number of new foreign entrants for any 12-month period, helped push California’s population to 31.5 million, even as hundreds of thousands of residents left the state for other parts of the country.

About half the immigrants reported being employed in their country of origin before coming to the United States.

The new numbers come as California politicians increasingly are seizing on immigration as a hot issue. Most of the debate has been about illegal immigration--estimated at about 100,000 a year to California--but some state officials have complained about the effects of legal immigration as well.

In all, 237,492 people immigrated legally to California in the 12 months that ended Sept. 30, 1992, the Finance Department said, based on reports from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. That was up from 193,278 the year before.

Most of the immigrants settled in a handful of California counties, with nearly four in 10 making Los Angeles County their new home. About 11% went to Orange County, 9% to Santa Clara County and 7% to San Diego County.

About 54% of the immigrants came from Asia, most of them from Vietnam and the Philippines.

Another 30% came from North America, 13% from Europe, 3% from South America and a smattering from other areas.

The biggest numerical increase came from North America, where movement to California jumped 42,800 to about 70,100. Immigrants from Central American countries were included in that category.

The number of legal immigrants from Mexico more than doubled, to 46,900. The increase was attributed to family members joining immigrants who had gained legal status through the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act’s amnesty program.

Charles Wheeler, directing attorney for the National Immigration Law Center, said immigrants affected by the amnesty program took an average of about five years to qualify for permanent residency status. Once they qualified as permanent residents, he said, it took another two years before they could bring their children or spouses into the country.

“This is the next wave,” Wheeler said. “Once mom and dad get permanent residency, they can petition for their sons and daughters.”

Many of those families are working in agriculture, said Phil Martin, a labor economist at UC Davis.

“One big question was to what extent these workers would continue to migrate seasonally back and forth and to what extent would they bring their families into the United States,” Martin said. “I’m not surprised that we got some fairly big numbers.”

Martin said it also appears that many of the legal immigrants are coming here because of job opportunities. The state report said half the newcomers were homemakers, retired, students or unemployed in their country of origin and half reported being employed before they moved.

Of those who were working, half were in professional or technical jobs, nearly a third worked in blue collar industries, about 16% were in service industries and 6% were in farming or fishing.

“The economy as a whole in California is still primarily diamond shaped, with most jobs in the middle, but it is becoming more like an hourglass,” Martin said. The jobs attracting immigrants, he said, are at the top and bottom of that hourglass.

“Just because California’s got really high unemployment, that doesn’t mean there are no places for raisin pickers on one end and certain specialized software engineers or Chinese cooks on the other end,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing we’re likely to see more of if the economy continues on this track.”

Where Immigrants Come From

Legal foreign immigration to California rose last year to more than 235,000, with much of the increase from Asia and Mexico. Here is a breakdown of where the legal immigrants came from between October, 1991, and September, 1992, by continent, as well as the five countries that sent the largest numbers:

AREA NUMBER INCREASE* Asia 128,549 12 % N. America 70,077 64 % Europe 27,195 8 % S. America 5,642 19 % Africa 4,361 9 % Oceania 1,668 -9 %

TOP COUNTRIES

NUMBER INCREASE* Mexico 46,905 108 % Vietnam 33,367 56 % Philippines 25,149 -3 % El Salvador 11,827 59 % China (mainland) 11,565 -3 %

* Percentage change is from the previous year

Source: Calif. Department of Finance

Compiled by Times researcher Nona Yates