The Real Face of Illegal Immigration in California

Here in California, if we add-up the expenses of just the basic components of illegal immigration for a single year, - - K-12 education for 430,000 kids, pre-natal & delivery costs in county hospitals for 84,000 illegal moms, monthly subsidies to these same illegal moms for their new U.S. citizens, emergency health care costs borne by the State's major counties, and the costs to incarcerate about 24,000 illegal alien felons in state/county prisons, we're at $5.9 billion, year after year after year.

Los Angeles County's underground cash economy is a fiscal disaster, with an estimated 28% of the workforce (mostly illegal immigrants) paid in cash, thus depriving the safety net of an estimated $1.1 billion annually.

California leads the nation in suffocating under the burden of medically uninsured people. California spent $1.55 billion in 2002 for medical care for uninsured illegal aliens. Los Angeles County recently voted to close 16 community clinics, and reduced by 25% funding for its network of private clinics partnering with the County. In addition to this, within the last decade, 50 emergency rooms and 17 trauma centers throughout Southern California have closed their doors, all because they couldn't afford to keep them open because of the exponentially increasing numbers of uninsured patients that include critical-masses of illegal aliens. The County's population grew 7.4 percent in the last decade; a period in which 27 hospitals closed their doors. Additionally, 81 hospitals no longer have emergency rooms. Los Angeles County spent about $340 million in 2002 providing health care to illegal immigrants, according to a report from the Department of Health Services. So bad is the crisis here that some patients must wait 4 days for a hospital bed, and some even die while waiting for these beds.

The statewide system is "on the brink of collapse," according to a 2003 study by the California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems. The study warned that thousands of workers will lose their jobs and hospitals will close if the split between rising costs and declining revenues keeps growing.

The Beltway's failure to enforce our immigration laws extends illegal immigration to a milestone of federal malfeasance rarely seen in public service.