We moved our software business to Nevada a few years back to avoid state taxes on work done outside the state and a lot of the labor board issues. Plus, it's inexpensive to live around Reno and the area is rapidly growing. This year we moved the HQ for our consulting program out of the state for similar reasons. 95% of our consultants are outside the state and the state makes licensing and franchising difficult and time consuming. California is an anti-business state. It's lovely to live here (not because of the government, because of the weather and environment which the state makes a mess of), and I was planning to leave in July for new pastures. For personal reasons, I may stay longer. Business #3, though, is moving to Wyoming.
San Leandro was very white up until the 80's. There's a comedian, Brian Copeland, who has written a book about growing up black in San Leandro. It's still a nice city while much more diverse. It was relatively affordable up until the last 6 years. I grew up in the flat area of Oakland, just above MacArthur. It was very working class and very diverse. Oakland is also seeing an influx of Asians from all over. I last heard that there are something like 137 different languages spoken by children in the school district.
I hear it's now Vietnamese nurses that are being imported. The Philippines was the biggest source for the last 50 years. I'm not sure if that's on the decline, or they are simply spreading out to other nations. The difficulty with Vietnamese nurses is that they don't learn English from a young age as Filiipinos do.
They're cheaper than American nurses. Many of these areas have rents that are so high it would be difficult for a nurse to afford renting a condo living by herself. Guess it's easier importing foreigners that are willing to put up with the high costs of living. In the old days, if they wanted skilled workers in higher cost of living areas they would have had to pay more. Many of these nurses probably just pack up multiple roommates per household and live very frugally, and then what amount of money they're able to save up ends up stretching a lot farther back in their home countries, since a small amount of money in the U.S. could still be a lot of money in Vietnam.
This is just from memory but several years ago I saw a study where something like 41% of people in California under the age of 25 grew up in a household where English was not the first language.
I live near large communities of Armenians and hear Russian spoken at Costco. There's a big Coptic church [Egyptian] near me. Probably more taco/ pho places than burger joints.
California envy abounds, it is usually very apparent during the winter when wide swaths of the hinterland are uninhabitable forcing residents to hunker down in bowling alleys and basements after braving the elements moving from bowling alley to a basement. One typical pastime is drinking and smoking,..its all the rage.