Illegal immigration may not be the only cause of California's massive financial shortcomings, but it's silly to say that it is not a major contribution.
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The benefits in immigrating to California have been known to Mexican nationals for at least a decade, but California's taxpayers are only now realizing the true cost. By some estimates, one-third of all illegal immigrants to the U.S. reside in California. The draws: programs like Medi-Cal, other state-based social programs, and a regulatory environment that is deliberately welcoming to the illegal immigrant. Though taxpayers have tried to end the steady flow of public money to illegal immigrants, politicians like Gov. Gray Davis in poorly conceived efforts to curry the favor of yet one more interest group, have always stepped in to assure that the money continues to flow.
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From
Fox News
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California Gov. Pete Wilson, in a series of high-profile challenges to the Clinton Administration's handling of illegal immigrants, has estimated that they cost the state $3.4 billion annually but pay only $739 million in taxes.
Wilson's office has concluded that the average illegal immigrant household receives $7,760 in government services each year. To cover the costs of such services, the average household would have to earn $100,000, he has said.
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From
Center for Immigration Studies, reprinted from a 1994 article in the
Los Angelos Times
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Compassion has limits. California, already stretched to the maximum, should—but unceasingly refuses to—face reality.
An $11,000 discount in annual tuition to illegal aliens attending UC schools does more than add to the state’s looming $12 billion budget deficit. The message to illegal aliens sent by the Regents is clear: Come to California. College is on us!
In-state tuition for illegal immigrants is unfair across the board. Sometime soon, a legal California resident will lose his place at UC to an illegal alien. And that student’s taxpaying parents will foot the bill.
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Joe Guzzardi,
VDARE.com
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There is no simple or single explanation for the kind of gaping budget deficit currently facing California. However, it would be naive in the extreme to ignore the impact of large-scale legal and illegal immigration on a $38.2 billion shortfall in this year's state budget.
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The most recent effort to assess the cost of immigration in California was made by the National Academy of Sciences in 1997, which estimated that costs associated with immigration added approximately $1,300 a year to the tax liability of the typical California household. At the time these estimates were made, the state had fewer immigrants, and the economy was reaching the zenith of the high-tech boom.
Most recently, Los Angeles County, which is experiencing a full-blown health care crisis, estimated that caring for uninsured illegal aliens now costs $350 million a year. The state health budget is projected to encounter $3 billion in unreimbursed health care costs for illegal immigrants over the next five years.
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Dan Stein,
San Jose Mercury-News
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Illegal Immigration Facts
Illegal immigrants who enroll in the University of California system are charged in-state tuition.
The INS estimated that as of October 1996 there are 5 million illegal immigrants in the United States. 2.7 million of the illegal immigrants were Mexican and two million resided in California. That estimate included the annual rate of increase in the illegal alien population -- 275,000 with 100,000 of that annual increase taking up residence in California. So, by 2000, the illegal alien population would have increased to about 6.1 million. (INS Stat Yearbook 1988)
The Census Bureau issued an estimate in January 2002 that the illegal alien population in 2000 was 8,705,421. That estimate was based on the discrepancy between the number of foreign-born residents and the number of legally admitted immigrants. Included in that number may be aliens residing in the United States under provisions that preclude their deportation, but who are not legal permanent residents, such as beneficiaries of Section 245(i) petitions, or asylees who have not been in the country long enough for adjustment of status, or Central American beneficiaries of the NACARA legislation. The Census Bureau estimate is preliminary and subject to modification after review of the methodology by interested parties.
Each year the Border Patrol is making more than a million apprehensions of persons who flagrantly violate our nation's laws by unlawfully crossing U.S. borders to work and to receive public assistance, usually with the aid of fraudulent documents. Such entry is a misdemeanor, and if repeated becomes punishable as a felony.
"More than 90% of migrants use a guide or a smuggling ring to get across the border. That's a big switch from the early 1990s." (Virginia Kice, INS Western Regional Office spokeswoman quoted in "Smugglers' Highway," Christian Science Monitor, May 2, 2001)
Illegal aliens from Central America have been allowed to remain in the United States so long that their homelands have grown dependent on the estimated $1.5 billion a year they send home in remittances. (Clinton Bars Amnesty for Latin Immigrants, Washington Post, May 9,1997)
The Census Bureau estimates that perhaps 115,000 people from Middle Eastern countries live in the United States illegally.
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Californians for Population Stabilisation
Also a good overall analysis
here and WND.
And even at the most conservative end of a given estimate -- $ 200 million for schooling, which some would argue California "can afford" as a state which would be in the G8 were it an autonomous nation -- it is wrong to simply ignore a problem because it's a minor one. I have enough money that I could probably be robbed of a few hundred dollars a month without detriment to my lifestyle, and probably without even noticing it, but that does not make the robbery an appropriate or justified action.
Californians themselves seem to disagree with the point that this is a small deal, having voted years ago to end benefits to illegal imigrants, only to have the federal courts buttfvck them on the law (to be fair, this was probably for the good, as Prop 187 would have cost more to implement than it would have saved.)
Phaedrus
