California Governor Jerry Brown (D) announced, via YouTube, that the state's deficit had soared to $16 billion, far exceeding the $9.2 billion he estimated in January. The state spent $2.1 billion more than expected.
His answer to his constituents to this problem is either approve tax hikes in November or he will cut social services, mostly to public education.
CALIFORNIA'S ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT PROBLEM
The chart below is from a study conducted in mid-2011, by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) - PDF page 4.
California has consistently remained the state with the largest illegal alien population throughout the years.
CALIFORNIA DREAM ACT
This is the Governor who, in 2011, signed the California DREAM Act into law, making illegal immigrants eligible for state scholarships and financial aid, which later reports from ABC News say will will cost taxpayers at least $65 million a year.
TWO OTHER BILLS SIGNED BY JERRY BROWN
Brown also signed two other laws to protect illegal aliens, in 2011, along with the DREAM Act, AB 1236, essentially banned any employers in the state from using E-Verify, the national online database used to check workers’ immigration status.
The second, (AB 353) blocked police from impounding vehicles at checkpoint because a driver is unlicensed.
CALIFORNIA WELFARE BENEFIT TO ILLEGAL ALIENS
California has long been in the news for money they spend on providing welfare benefits to those in the country illegally.
Using just one county of an example of a problem running rampant throughout the whole state of California.
In 2010 it was report that one county, LA County, spent $52 million in welfare benefits to illegal immigrants. By the beginning of 2011 that number for just that same one county was estimated at $600 million.
In January 2011, Supervisor Antonovich told reporters: "When you add this to $550 million for public safety and nearly $500 million for healthcare, the total cost for illegal immigrants to county taxpayers exceeds $1.6 billion dollars a year -- not including the hundreds of millions of dollars for education."
CALIFORNIA SANCTUARY CITIES
LA is also one of the known sanctuary cities across the state of California.
Sanctuary cities offer assistance and protection to illegal aliens, via welfare benefits as described above, along with a refusal in those cities to enforce the federal immigration laws, thereby offering sanctuary to those in the country illegally and using taxpayer funds to support them.
- California
- Bell Gardens, CA
- City of Industry, CA
- City of Commerce, CA
- Cypress, CA
- Davis CA
- Downey, CA
- Fresno, CA (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service)
- Lakewood, CA
- Los Angeles, CA (Congressional Research Service)
- Long Beach, CA
- Lynwood, CA
- Maywood, CA
- Montebello, CA
- National City, CA
- Norwalk, CA
- Oakland, CA (Added 8-27-07. Source: 4/25/07 story by KCBS 740 AM. Link here.)
- Paramount, CA
- Pico Rivera, CA
- Richmond, CA (Added 11-5-09. Sources: Mayor Gayle McLaughlin's campaign website from 2004, 2006)
- So. Gate, CA
- San Bernardino, Ca. (Added 6/7/07, reader submitted / 9/5/08 Listing disputed by the city administration* See addl.notes)
- San Diego, CA (Congressional Research Service)
- Santa Clara County, CA (Added 11-29-10, source: Forced into Immigration Enforcement, A County Considers Plan B, 10-21-10, Huffington Post.)
- Santa Cruz, CA (Added 5/30/07, documented by KSBW news)
- San Francisco, CA (Congressional Research Service)
- San Jose, CA (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service)
- Santa Maria, CA (11-18-08 Submitted research from local activist/ Listing disputed by the city administration)
- Sonoma County, CA (Congressional Research Service)
- Vernon, CA
- Watsonville, CA (Added 5/30/07, documented by KSBW news)
- Wilmington, CA
List obtained from OJJPAC and Sanctuary Cities and States Information Resource- CA. page
Using the numbers from LA County above, one can see the tremendous drain on California resources as a whole when taxpayers are forced to pay for welfare benefits, education, food stamps, public safety, Aid to Families with Dependent Children aka AFDC, school nutrition, and healthcare for illegal aliens across the state.
According to a study conducted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), illegal immigration costs California nearly $22 billion each year. This amounts to $2,724 per California household to pay for the health care, education, welfare and incarceration of illegal immigrants.(Source- Representatives. Elton Gallegly and Lamar Smith)
The study itself listed the California total as an estimated $21.8 billion in annual expenditures on illegal aliens. (Page 4 of PDF)
As seen at the top of this piece, Brown's announcement was the state's deficit had soared to $16 billion.
$21.8 billion- $16 billion = $5.8 billion
I am not sure what type of calculator Governor Brown is using, but according to my calculator, if Brown stopped spending $21.8 billion on benefits for illegal aliens in his state, that $16 billion deficit would turn into a $5.8 billion surplus without raising taxes or cutting social services and education for those residents there legally.
Yet Governor Jerry Brown is now threatening the legal residents of his state of California with deep cuts to social services and their education if they don't approve tax increases from the wealthy that are there and paying their taxes legally.
What is wrong with this picture?
For the record, it is not only California citizens for Brown's incompetence, American taxpayers are bilked as well with federal grants to California and other state's sanctuary cities.
The Department of Justice annually awards millions of dollars in grants to local governments to compensate for the cost of jailing illegal aliens, even when those governments have policies obstructing immigration law enforcement or encouraging illegal settlement. In 2010, the grant program, known as the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), doled out a total of roughly $400 million to about 850 cities, counties, and states.1 Among them were 27 jurisdictions widely considered to be sanctuary jurisdictions, which together received more than $62.6 million, or 15.6 percent of the total (see Table 1). For example, the 2010 SCAAP grantees include some jurisdictions — such as San Francisco, Chicago, Santa Clara County, Calif., and Arlington, Va. — that are trying to opt-out of Secure Communities, the program that automatically flags criminal aliens for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attention at the time they are booked into jail.2(Click here to see how much California's sanctuary cities are costing the rest of America)