Photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images
A shocking new report from City Journal out this week has uncovered that California spent an astonishing $11 billion subsidizing illegal aliens in the most recent fiscal year. That figure includes some illegal alien families receiving more than $100,000 in a single year from the government.
The report’s author, Christopher Rufo, explained that California “runs the nation’s largest welfare system, devoting more than $180 billion annually to food, health care, and other programs for the poor and downtrodden.” As a result, California has one of the nation’s highest tax burdens in order to afford these benefits – along with receiving lucrative payouts from the federal government.
Rufo’s reporting confirms that a big chunk of that money, including taxpayer dollars from citizens in other states funneled through federal cost-sharing schemes, is going to illegal aliens.
City Journal visited “four public-services offices in Southern California, each of which admitted that illegal aliens can enroll in public-welfare programs or receive benefits on their children’s behalf.” While illegal aliens are technically ineligible for most welfare programs, so long as their children were born in the United States, the parents can apply for benefits in their name. This explains a major incentive for noncitizens to travel to the United States while pregnant, giving birth to so-called “anchor babies.”
City Journal reporters found that local officials “were remarkably transparent” after being asked about California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI).
This program is California’s state-funded Supplemental Security Income alternative for low-income residents who are not citizens. “If [you are] a citizen, you cannot get CAPI,” a welfare officer from Glendale said. “I don’t care about legal or not. Not being [a] citizen [is the key].”
A welfare officer from Los Angeles explained that even some of the state programs that are not typically available to illegal aliens are available to their U.S.-born children. For example, the purpose of the state’s California Work Opportunities and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) program is to provide financial assistance to needy families. The welfare officer explained that an illegal alien who was a parent would still receive aid from CalWORKs if she had a child who was a citizen.
Rufo added the services and financial aid together and found that a family of illegal aliens in California could potentially receive about as much as the median income in the state.
“In California, illegal immigrants can qualify for CAPI, public health insurance, and various tax credits. Their children qualify for others, including CalWORKs and, as in other states, Section 8 rental subsidies,” he said. “All told, a family of five in California with two illegal-alien parents, two U.S.-born children, and one illegal-alien grandparent can receive public services worth more than $100,000 per year.”
In other words, illegal aliens in California can receive about the same amount of money for doing nothing as the average hard-working family of U.S. citizens could expect to earn in the state.
To circumvent the federal laws banning illegal aliens from receiving welfare, California “created parallel state and locally funded programs that allowed the state to extend benefits” to the illegal population. The state provides Medicaid to illegal aliens by using a state-funded “bucket” to extend coverage to illegals. Rufo wrote that this expansion has “enrolled some 1.7 million people, costing the state an estimated $10 billion annually.”
California has created a “distinct legal category” that allows illegal aliens to qualify for state programs. Rufo explained that the state “deems certain aliens to be ‘permanently residing under color of law’—living in California with the ‘knowledge and permission’ of immigration enforcement—and allows them to use this designation to enroll in Medi-Cal, CAPI, and other government programs.”
Rather than correcting course, the state is doubling down. Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation into law in 2022 that “extended taxpayer-funded food benefits to illegal low-income residents.” As a result, “qualified Californians 55 and older will become eligible for that program, regardless of immigration status” starting next October. This is estimated to cost the state an additional $400 million per year.
For years, liberals insisted that the narrative that illegal aliens are sucking up massive amounts of welfare money paid out by U.S. citizen taxpayers was nothing more than a right-wing “conspiracy theory.” Now, Democrats like Gavin Newsom are not only admitting that they are giving free handouts to illegals, they’re openly bragging about it.
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