Some of our favorite commenters at LA Weekly compare Los Angeles to Tijuana and say our fair town is turning into a Third World slum.

We beg to differ, of course. Not only because immigrants have invigorated an inner city devastated by the L.A. riots, but because more billionaires live in California than just about anywhere else on the planet. Can't be that bad.

A new study seems to agree:

UC Irvine's Southern California Regional Progress Report, scheduled to be released next week, found that “the large influx of Asian and Latino immigrants into Southern California over the past 50 years has resulted in stronger and safer multicultural communities.”

Say what?

Yeah, the school says immigrants actually contributed to an increase in property values and a decrease in crime rates.

Come again!?

We're not lying. According to UC Irvine:

Neighborhoods with 10 percent more Latinos than surrounding areas at the beginning of the 2000s experienced a 1.3 percent greater increase in home values over the decade.

And …

… Ethnically mixed neighborhoods in Southern California today are more likely to have higher property values than homogenous neighborhood …

Even the ones with pickup trucks on the lawns? We kid!

Like us, John Hipp, one of the UC Irvine researchers behind the report, said, Holy frijole, this data is blowin' my membrane:

A number of findings took us by surprise.

Fer sure.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

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