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Originally Posted by Jeanfromfillmore
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It's probably true, as Schwarzenegger said Sunday on "State of the Union" on CNN, that California pays "approximately a billion dollars for the incarceration of undocumented immigrants" and gets only $100 million in return. The federal government does indeed have an obligation to reimburse the state for part of the cost of the failure to adequately control the nation's borders, and the governor is right to seek every bit of revenue and reimbursement due to the state, to decrease the damage caused by inevitable cuts.
But illegal immigration didn't get California into its budget fix, and full federal payment -- an unlikely prospect -- wouldn't get us out. Playing to the anti-immigrant chorus, even in a quest for federal money, undermines the message every Californian must hear: We cannot currently pay for those programs that we consistently list as our top priorities, including first-rate education, transportation and public safety, and it's not because of the size of the undocumented population. It's because of our appetite for services, the structure of our tax system and the dysfunction of our government.
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We've heard this before at this very forum. "It's because of our appetite for services, the structure of our tax system and the dysfunction of our government." But what about the appetite of illegal immigrants for our "services"? What about the unwillingness of our government to police illegal immigration at all? That's not dysfunctional? People argue for illegal immigration because they pay taxes. What part of the structure of out tax system allows illegals to pay taxes?
Exclude illegal immigrants and all of their offspring from "services", including education. Unleash and fund state and local law enforcement against the simple presence of illegal immigrants. Purge illegal immigrants from labor in California. Do all this and out economy and government will be on its way to sorting itself out.