Bailing Out Illegals

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, July 10, 2009 4:20 PM PT


Illegal Immigration: As California issues IOUs to its citizens, another ballot proposition may be brewing to cut off benefits that are draining the state budget. From education to welfare to crime, the cupboard is bare.

California is a leader in both government debt and the sanctuary city movement. But as its citizens seek shelter from the economic storm, the question has arisen anew whether its non-citizens and the better life they want takes precedence over its citizens and the better life they are entitled to.

In this mother of all recessions, it's getting harder to argue that illegal aliens are here to do the jobs Americans won't do. These days there are fewer jobs Americans won't do. These days there are fewer jobs, period. It's fair to ask whether those who are going to pull the wagon of higher taxes should get to decide who rides inside.

California is now paying out about $80 million a day in unemployment insurance benefits as unemployment hovers around 11.4% and is on pace to top $1.5 billion for the month of July, Employment Development Department officials report. California's Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund ran out of money in January. The state has been borrowing from the federal government since then to make the payments.

These unemployment figures would be worse were it not for Californians leaving the state in droves. Between 2005 and 2007, some 2.14 million of them fled to other states, while only 1.44 million moved to California from other states.

Illegal aliens constitute about 7% of the state's population, or about 2.7 million, according to an April report by the Pew Hispanic Center. State officials say that they add about $4 billion to $6 billion in costs, primarily in the area of schools, prisons and jails, and emergency rooms. This is money the slightly less Golden State can scarcely afford.

For fiscal 2009-10, it's estimated that about $834 million will be spent to incarcerate 189,000 illegal immigrants in the state's prison system. In Los Angeles County alone, Supervisor Mike Antonovich says, illegal aliens add up to $550 million annually in criminal justice costs.

Little note has been made that much of California's prison crisis is due to crimes committed by illegal aliens invited in through the sanctuary policies of its major cities and their policies of not allowing local police to notify immigration authorities when suspected illegals are apprehended.

According to statistics released by the FBI, more than 95% of arrest warrants issued in Los Angeles for the crime of murder are for illegal aliens. Nearly 25% of the California prison population consists of illegal aliens. Increased border and interior enforcement, coupled with expedited deportation, could help immeasurably.

The state legislative analyst estimates, based on Pew data, that about 300,000 of the state's 6.3 million public school students are illegal residents. They are educated by California taxpayers to the tune of $7,626 each for a total cost of nearly $2.3 billion.

At the college level, California is one of 10 states that grant the children of illegal aliens in-state tuition rates. The financial benefits of these programs to illegal aliens are as great as the penalty imposed on U.S. citizens and state treasuries. So if their parents sneak in from Guadalajara, they get a break that the children of an Iraq veteran from Nevada doesn't.

In health care, the expected tab for 2009-10 is $703 million for as many as 700,000 illegals. Even Gov. Schwarzenegger was moved recently to propose limiting welfare and non-emergency health care for them.

The last time things were this bad in California was in 1994, when Proposition 187 was passed to deny taxpayer-funded benefits to the undocumented. A U.S. District Court judge ruled most of it unconstitutional, but activists looking at California's plight and the burdens illegals impose are working to resurrect a similar proposition.

They want a "no vacancy" sign hung on Hotel California.

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