California's budget deficit....
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Posted by Jim S on August 12, 2008 at 17:29:19
http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/aug/12/eliminate-illegal-immigration-to-eliminate-state/Eliminate illegal immigration to eliminate state deficit
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
To hear California's Republican governor and Democratic Legislature tell it, the Golden State's revenues are in such dire straits that the state government must raise taxes to make ends meet.The facts tell a different story.
Just four years ago, California taxpayers filled the state's coffers with more than $74 billion. In the fiscal year that ended in June, taxpayers sent more than $96 billion to Sacramento — a $22 billion and 23 percent increase in revenues. That's three-and-a-half times the amount of the budget deficit the state is experiencing this year. Clearly, it's not revenues that are lacking. It's spending that is out of whack.
While I fully endorse cutting back on government spending, California does not have to eliminate legitimate spending to balance its budget. It needs to eliminate waste and fraud.
Eliminating waste and fraud was the promise Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made to voters to get elected to office. But he has ignored the poster child of waste and fraud: illegal immigration. Anyone who comes here illegally to work or take advantage of our social benefits is committing fraud. Any government that allows that to happen is wasteful of its legal residents' money.
Unnecessary deficit
The result is an unnecessary deficit.
In 2004, the Federation for American Immigration Reform published the most recent comprehensive report on how much illegal immigration costs the state of California. That report showed an $8.8 billion net loss to the state, enough to cover this year's deficit and provide the state with a $2.8 billion surplus.
And that was four years ago. The costs — and the savings — would be much greater today.
Another study bears that out. While FAIR's study is the latest to focus exclusively on California, a December nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report that looked at the entire United States reached a similar conclusion, and estimated the costs to California as even higher.
California, the CBO noted, incurs the highest costs from illegal immigration, ranging in the "tens of billions of dollars." Moreover, the report stated: "The tax revenues that unauthorized immigrants generate for state and local governments do not offset the total cost of services provided to those immigrants."
Illegal immigration impacts pocketbook
California is home to about 25 percent of the nation's illegal population and illegal immigrants comprise about 8 percent of California's population. Clearly, illegal immigration impacts the state's pocketbook.
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