Texas, a land of exile for Californians

Audio 03:35

Text by: Thomas Harms

8 min

Uber chose to set up its US headquarters in Texas and Tesla to open its factory there. These brands that we associate with California are now Texan. Texas also attracts residents of California. So much so that we are starting to talk about an exodus of Californians to this great state of the country.

Publicity

“  Stop coming to Texas! Don't turn my Texas into California  ”. Messages like these are popping up more and more on the internet.

Marie Bailey, real estate agent in Dallas, works exclusively with Californians who want to settle in Texas, mainly through a group on Facebook. She has to face these angry Texans at the arrival of Californians: “  There are a lot of very angry people. They said that this group should be denounced as a terrorist threat, and the group they were talking about was mine ! There was a photo of my band and it went viral. I started to receive phone calls. And every now and then I get messages from people saying, "don't let the liberal [Californians] in, they're going to destroy Texas." "

Texas is indeed the first destination chosen by Californian migrants. They were 60 to 70,000 each year for ten years. But recently this figure has seen a significant increase.

Employment opportunities

Two years ago, in 2018, more than 86,000 Californians became Texans. Cindi Bulla is the director of the Texas Realtors Association: “  I recently sold a house to someone from Los Angeles who was retiring. Most of their savings for retirement were tied up in their much-appreciated home in that corner of Los Angeles. Thanks to its sale, they were able to come here, buy a very nice house and live in a very comfortable way. There are therefore some retirees, but the majority are generally young people in their forties, fifties who come for career opportunities  ”.

And the attraction of Texas is financial, as Natalie Jackson explains. She is director of research at the Institute of PRRI opinion in Washington and published a demographic study of Californians Texas "  Texas has a very advantageous regulation for companies, tax rates are lower, it n There are no income taxes for Texans, just federal taxes. It's very attractive to people who work in technology. A lot of people who come from California to Texas say they can now afford a better life, they can buy a house. For those middle-income people, it's easier to have a good standard of living in Texas. "

These Californians first choose to start from the more expensive corners of the Golden State, as Marie Bailey explains: “  I would say that it concerns more southern California and the north. In central California the cost of living is lower so there is less incentive to leave. On the other hand, northern California like San Francisco, Silicon Valley and southern California like Orange County or Los Angeles, life is really expensive there. "

Fear of the democrat

However, these regions vote more for Democrats than other districts in California. Suddenly, conservative Texans are afraid that this migration will change the political color of their state. But according to Marie Bailey, it's quite the opposite:

“A  lot of people think they're coming to turn Texas into California, I doubt it, and I don't think I'm wrong. I have the most active and most followed group on social media for Californians who come to Texas or have settled there. And the vast majority of them are conservatives. They are so conservative that we have a rule: if someone says they are going to move to Texas, it is illegal to harass them to vote conservative. So I doubt they'll change Texas much.  "

► See also: Report - The Republicans of Texas behind Trump on immigration

According to Texan demographers, by 2050, up to 20 million people will have chosen to settle in Texas, a large part coming from California.

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