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California Spends $21 Billion Annually to Support Undocumented Immigrants
Buzz up!1 vote ShareretweetEmailPrintSylvia Cochran Sylvia Cochran – Wed Jan 26, 2:30 pm ET
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Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich reveals the cost of local illegal immigration, and the figures are staggering. When combining the numbers for the CalWORKs program ($22 million) and food stamps assistance ($31 million), the sum totals a confounding $53 million paid to support American-born children of illegal aliens.
Stepping back a bit further, Los Angeles County Supervisor Antonovich explains that 22 percent of CalWORKs and food stamp benefits within the county go to undocumented immigrants. Additional costs of approximately $500 million for health care, $550 million for public safety and $570 million for CalWORKs and food stamps bring the grand total to an estimated $1.6 billion.
This is not the first time that Antonovich sounds the alarm bells for the county of Los Angeles. In May 2010 his office issued a similar news release. It outlined that the cost for the support of illegal immigrants' children stood at $52 million while overall the cost for illegal immigrants -- borne by L.A. County taxpayers -- exceeded $1 billion. It is clear that his warnings fell on deaf ears.
Of course, illegal immigration is not a social issue endemic only to Los Angeles County. Undocumented immigrants present a fiscal drain for taxpayers all over the Golden State. In fact, nationwide California leads the pack with an expenditure of $21 billion on illegal aliens (compare this to the $84.2 billion figure that denotes the statewide cost for undocumented workers across the nation).
The permissive nature that the border state of California displays toward federal immigration law has also spawned home-grown fraud. Cases in point are the allegations faced by Tri-Valley University, which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claims has fraudulently issued numerous U.S. visas to foreign nationals masquerading as students.
The school came to the attention of the federal government when it applied for an unusually large amount of student visas while concurrently listing the same address for about half of the applicants.
It is interesting to note that next week California Gov. Jerry Brown is scheduled to deliver his state of the state address to the legislature and the electorate. A $25.4 billion deficit faces the state by June 2012. Rather than patching the gaping hole with the smoke and mirrors approach embraced by his predecessor, Brown favors $12.5 billion in spending cuts and about just as much in tax hikes.
The likely elephant in the room -- which might just remain unmentioned -- is the sizable sum of $21 billion the state spends on undocumented immigrants.
It is unclear if voters will approve the proposed extension of temporary tax hikes and also vote for further fees and taxes, especially when taxpayers have to make up for some of the services the governor plans on cutting.
Sylvia Cochran is a Los Angeles area resident with a firm finger on the pulse of California politics. Talk radio junkie, community volunteer and politically independent, she scrutinizes the good and the bad from both sides of the political aisle.
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