Calipatria is one of the state's poorest cities in income per capita due to agricultural paychecks and a declined economy in the 1990s. Hispanics, mostly of Mexican descent, comprise three-fourths of residents (excluding the multiracial body of state prison convicts). The city was first called "Sante Patria" (as in "Saint of the Motherland") and was founded by Irish American and Irish Mexican soldiers, who deserted both in the Mexican–American War (1850s) and from the Union and/or Confederate armies after the American Civil War (1860s). Calipatria also has a large Arab population with origins from Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, descendants of agriculture laborers in the 1920s.