California overpays for immigrant welfare


Ivan Light

San Francisco Chronicle January 11, 2011 04:00 AM

Share Comments (3)

California carries more than twice its share of the nation's burden for the support of needy immigrants. This is a problem of American federalism, not a problem of tax evasion by immigrants.

If immigrants were evenly distributed among the 50 states, California's share of the national immigrant welfare bill would be 6 percent. Instead, it pays 13 percent, according researchers.

In the United States, welfare is a shared federal and state responsibility. Fifty states share financial responsibility for Temporary Aid to Needy Families and Medicaid with the federal government, which contributes half of each state's cost of these programs. It is unfair to share welfare responsibility with states when 45 states have few immigrants, and only five have large populations of immigrants.

Five states, of which California is the largest, have borne two-thirds of the nation's immigration-related welfare burden. The other states are New York, Texas, Florida and Illinois. This imbalance stems from the heavy clustering of immigrants in just those states, especially in California. If California had no immigrants, its share of the costs would be zero.

Other reasons California overpays for aid to immigrants arise from the mismatch between the taxes immigrants pay and the benefits immigrants receive. Two-thirds to three-quarters of immigrants' taxes go to the federal government. One-third to one-quarter go to states. However, state and local governments pay at least half the cost of immigrants' education and health care.

The free public education that immigrants' children receive comes from state governments, on which immigrants impose heavier-than-average costs while paying lower-than-average taxes. Similarly, a third of immigrants receive no employer-paid health care. When injured or ill, uninsured immigrants use public emergency rooms at the expense of state taxpayers. If a state has no immigrants, it pays nothing for the education of immigrant children or for immigrants' emergency health care.

The costs of immigration rightly belong to the federal government, which has the exclusive authority to legislate immigration quotas and immigration controls.

States should share these costs equally, but high immigration states, especially California, are picking up the federal government's bill, while low immigration states pay nothing. Billions are at stake every year.

This is a California issue, not a Republican or Democratic issue. California's congressional delegation should press the federal government for relief from this inequity.

Ivan Light is professor emeritus of sociology at UCLA.


www.sfgate.com