California RESIDENTS refers to people living in the state, not medical residents (or physicians/surgeons in training). California is poised to be the first state in which the Caucasian population is the minority and some state residents are trying to limit the number of non-citizens/foreign nationals coming in.
However, it is still ILLEGAL to limit medical training positions to US citizens only. Programs are not allowed to discriminate in that fashion. As far as I know there is no quota or cap on the number of IMGs allowed in the state.
The rub is this...California residencies are very popular for ALL categories of citizenship and coountry of medical school graduation. Therefore, most California programs get more than enough residency application from US citizens who graduated from US medical schools. Therefore, they can limit the number of IMGs they take on the basis that they get enough applications from others. You may very well be refused a position because you aren't a US grad, but you can't really very well prove it.
In the end it doesn't really matter. If you want to apply to California programs, go ahead and do so...there are some IMGs in programs there and there is no reason why, provided all else is equal, you wouldn't be competitive at some programs.
