California: Social Policy Issues

For fiscal year '97-'98, the state spent $84 million on prenatal care for the same estimated 70,000 illegal alien women. The issue of whether California is required by federal law to provide those services as emergency medical and public health expenditures is due to come to trial in November 1998.
(Migration News, July 7, 1998)

The state Housing and Community Development department has prepared new screening rules based on the welfare reform legislation adopted by Congress in 1996 that would ban illegal aliens from public housing programs. The HCD estimates that as many as 5 percent of 25,000 housing units could be affected. Advocates for the poor say the share could be much higher. Gov. Wilson has described the move as fulfilling the will of the people and removing benefits that serve as a magnet for illegal aliens. As background, state authorities pointed out that there is a waiting list of one-to-two years for some of the rental assistance programs.
(San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 17, 1997)

Data from the state Department of Health Services for 1995 indicate that Mexican-born women gave birth to 57% of 253,726 births to Hispanic women. That means that Mexican-born women in the country both legally and illegally accounted for 26.2% of California's total 253,726 births.

Health care costs in California have continued to soar as people flood the state to take advantage of Medi-Cal. It is estimated that the state paid $1 billion in emergency and pregnancy-related services for undocumented aliens in 1993. This figure is up almost 43% from the $700 million paid in 1992.
(Source: State Department of Health Services)

Attempted Medi-Cal fraud in San Diego and Imperial Counties has increased tenfold and state officials have uncovered 2,663 cases which could have cost taxpayers $6.5 million. However, that number is far from the true total of fraud cases.
(Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune, 4/11/93)

Non-naturalized immigrants in California receiving food stamps, and subject to the cut-off as a result of the welfare reform bill, are estimated at 467,000 out of a total of 3.2 million beneficiaries. That is about 15%. This is higher than their share of the population because the 15% non-naturalized foreign born in the 1990 Census included many illegal aliens who are not eligible for food stamps, and because California has been a target of the stepped-up naturalization campaign by the INS.
(Source: Los Angeles Times, November 1, 1996)

California made plans in November 1996 to make illegal aliens ineligible for benefits funded by state taxes after December 1, 1996, including prenatal care for pregnant women. Among the programs whose clients may be asked about their immigration status are those for early breast-cancer detection; child-abuse prevention; foster care; abortion and family planning services; and, assistance for the deaf and disabled.

California will cut welfare payments for 2.7 million recipients on January 1, 1997, by 4.9% to $565 for a family of three in urban areas and by 9.8% to $538 for a family of three in 41 rural counties. Welfare checks written in December 1996 count against the maximum two years and then work, and maximum five years of lifetime assistance limits.

California counties are holding hearings to determine whether to begin requiring proof of legal US residence before providing services at tax-funded county clinics. If the counties turn away illegal aliens, they will have to get medical services either in hospital emergency rooms or in private "free clinics." In Sacramento county, for example, an estimated 630 unauthorized aliens received medical care at county clinics in 1995, at an estimated cost of $300,000. All persons were made eligible for services at county hospitals in 1982.
(Source: Rural Migration News, January 1997)

State authorities estimate that two-thirds of elderly immigrants receiving SSI have been in the United States for fewer than 15 years. (These are immigrants who are likely to have been sponsored for immigration by their earlier immigrating children and who are not likely to qualify for continuing SSI on the basis of 10 years of contributions into the Social Security system.)
(Source: San Francisco Chronicle, April 19, 1997)

State officials estimate that California hosts about 200,000 immigrants who stand to lose their SSI benefits. That is about two-fifths of the national total in that situation.
(Source: San Francisco Examiner, April 22, 1997)

The partial restoration of SSI benefits agreed to in May -- for disabled, but not elderly immigrants--is projected to restore benefits for 106,000 recipients in California, 40% of the total nationwide, but still leave about 110,000 elderly in the state subject to the cut-off.
(Source: The Sacramento Bee, May 3, 1997)

In San Francisco, authorities estimate there are 10,500 immigrants who will become ineligible for SSI benefits if they don't naturalize. One-tenth are under age 50, one-tenth are between 50 and 65, and the remaining four-fifths are over age 65. A majority are Chinese (52%). Others are Latinos (15%), Filipinos (13%), Vietnamese (6%), Korean (3%) and Russian (2%).
(Source: World Journal, May 27, 1997)

California in 1994 was estimated to be home for almost 870,000 Chinese (of a U.S. total of more than 1.8 million). Nearly 400,000 live in Southern California. A 1997 poll of the Southland Chinese found that 87% said they were immigrants. They generally reported high levels of education and median family incomes higher than the national average. But the results also showed a growing gap between the affluent and poorer immigrants. Among those surveyed, one- fifth said someone in their family received government assistance.
(Los Angeles Times, June 29, 1997)

The 1994 Proposition 187 effort to end taxpayer-financed programs for illegal aliens, adopted by 59 percent of the California electorate, is yet to be implemented. It was immediately challenged in a federal court after adoption and was enjoined. On March 18, 1998 -- three-and-a-half years later -- the federal judge (Mariana Pfaelzer) finally issued a ruling striking down Proposition 187 as unconstitutional on the basis that state law would have acted in areas of federal jurisdiction. The judges' interpretation will be appealed to the circuit court according to Gov. Pete Wilson. The state will argue that California taxpayers were not trying to regulate immigration, only how their tax dollars would be spent.
[FAIR issued a press release excoriating Judge Pfaelzer's ruling]
(Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, March 19, 1998)

An investigation of California's Medi-Cal program to provide medical services to 5 million poor and disabled Californians has found it rife with fraud. The extent of phony charges to the system may be higher than one billion dollars annually. The investigation indicates that the schemes were often in immigrant communities. According to John Wang, a criminal justice professor at Cal-State in Long Beach, who is studying Medi-Cal fraud in Asian communities, "To an immigrant, if there is no official reaction or sanction or punishment, then they consider it legal or implied legal because there is nobody stopping them."
(San Diego Union Tribune, December 2, 1999)

EDUCATION ISSUES
According to Kenji Hakuta a Stanford education professor:
"It's a sad situation for schools right now. We've got extremely scarce resources. We have people fighting over bread crumbs. And we have groups with equally strong and important needs for which society isn't willing to provide. When the stakes are like this, the fight only gets more and more vicious."
State funding for limited-English students has steadily increased to $319 million today from $108 million in 1986. Funding for low-income students [often blacks] decreased to $64 million from $93 million while the number of low-income students grew to 1.9 million from 1 million. The number of students who primarily speak a language other than English went to 1.3 million from 514,000. Another $50 million in federal funding went directly to California's bilingual education programs. The prospect is for tensions over educational resource allocations between immigrants and poor native-English speakers to get much worse as the Latino student population rises to 50% of total student enrollment by 2005 (compared to today's 39%).
(San Francisco Examiner, "Competing needs of Latino, black students put pressure on scarce funds," May 14, 1997 also see S.F. Chronicle July 18, 1997)

From 1990 to 1996 the share of California public school students considered "limited English Proficient (LEP)," jumped to nearly 25% from just over 18%. The share of students 'graduating' out of LEP instruction each year into regular courses dropped from 10.5% in 1986 to 6.5% in 1996. This situation is expected to get worse. What is proposed to deal with this trend? California plans to offer the national math test in Spanish in 1999 for eighth-graders. "We may need to give increased time for students who lack English skills to take tests. We will need to modify tests by removing the more difficult vocabulary, and resort to more qualitative assessment by making observations of kids and looking at portfolios," according to Stanford professor Hakuta. The question is, will this prepare them for college? According to Delia Pompa, U.S. Dept. of Education bilingual education director, "What we must keep in mind is that if the kids don't graduate and go to college we'll have a population ill-prepared to enter the work world and conduct themselves as responsible citizens."
(San Francisco Examiner, "21st-century test for schools: Millions of students with limited English," May 15, 1997)

The new California law calling for English-only student testing is stirring up controversy. In Los Angeles Unified School District, Supt. Ruben Zacarias has called for defiance of the law, and in San Francisco, a school district spokeswoman termed the requirement "unfair." She noted that 32% of the 66,000 students in K-12 classes do not speak English as their primary language. (Los Angeles Times, February 2, 1998)

California's immigrant fueled demographic change has serious effects on the state's education system. About 1.3 million public school students speak a foreign language and have limited English skills. Native Spanish speakers account for more than 1 million of them.

California has about 1.4 million Limited English Proficient (LEP) students in public schools. These students are largely immigrant children and the children of immigrants who require special instruction to prepare them to study in English.
(Source: Migration News, July 7, 1998)

FOREIGN STUDENTS
The 1997/98 annual report of the Institute of International Education shows a 5.1% increase in foreign students attending U.S. colleges and universities (481,280) over a year earlier. California had the greatest number in the country: 65,292 (13.7% of the total). However, none of California's schools had enough foreign student to rank among the top 25 in the country. The state's foreign students were concentrated in the counties of Los Angeles (21,167), San Francisco (7,069), Santa Clara (6,781), San Diego (5,706), and Orange (4,438).

CRIME
According to a Hollywood Division citizen advisory board member, the U.S. Department of Justice estimates that there are 10,000 illegal alien members of the 18th Street gang in Los Angeles. That information was used to support a request to the Police Commission for more active efforts to identify illegal aliens for deportation. The Commission rejected the proposal on the basis that enough was being done by having 4 INS officers assigned full time to the county jail to screen prisoners.
(LatinoLink News Services June 24, 1997)

California and its regional governments spend more than $500 million a year to arrest and imprison illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes. Total legal costs of crimes committed in California by people who are not legal U.S. residents is estimated to be between $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year.
(Source: "The Criminal Alien," a report by the California Joint Committee on Prison Construction and Operations)

Deportable aliens comprise 11% of the Los Angeles County jail population costing the county an estimated $75 million a year.
(Source: "Impact of Repeat Arrests on Deportable Criminal Aliens in Los Angeles County")

California sued the federal government in March 1996 to make up the difference between the $252 million it received last year in compensation for the costs of incarcerating criminal aliens and the $400 million it estimates that it spends. The suit was denied by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on June 3, 1997. The court ruled, in effect, that Atty. Gen. Reno could not reimburse more than the amount appropriated for that purpose by Congress. California authorities said that there will be about 20,000 incarcerated criminal aliens who are illegally in the United States in jail in California by mid-summer.
(Source: San Diego Union Tribune, June 4, 1997)

Anaheim was the focus of an in-depth article "...Activists Find Their Values And Tolerance Can Conflict." The focus was on city decay and local activism to try to turn the problem around. Much of the problem-causing demographic change was identified as due to the influx of immigrants, often working in services to the Disneyland industry. The side effects of large scale immigrant settlement, the largest group being from Mexico, include apartment overcrowding, school overcrowding, rising crime rates, and falling property values. In addition the role of English instruction in the schools has engendered strong emotions.
(Source: Wall Street Journal, March 5, 1998)

The San Diego sheriff's department is seeking help from the Latino community in Visa to help fight an influx of brothels (over 20) in the north county city. According to the local authorities more than 200 prostitutes and customers have been arrested and deported to Mexico over the past year. The brothels have been found to often be run by illegal aliens.
(Source: dailynews (Yahoo.com), August 18, 1998)

Narcotics agents apprehended six Mexican illegal aliens who were cultivating the largest marijuana plant found in California this year about three miles southwest of San Andreas in Calaveras County. The narcotics agents, who had been maintaining surveillance for more than a month, destroyed 11,643 marijuana plants.
(Source: Modesto Bee, August 28, 1998)

CARRYING CAPACITY

"Despite the ravings of some racist fanatics, immigration is not a
racial problem;  it is a population problem.  It is projected to be a
principal cause of U.S. population growth.
Is it "immigrant bashing" or simply common foresight to ask what
would be required for a doubled or tripled or quadrupled population?
What about jobs, schools, parks, housing, air quality, open space, 
farmland and food production, transportation and infrastructure
of all kinds?...
In California the most conspicuous resource in short supply is water.
In drought years, this state does not have enough available water
for the present population at current rates of use."

The Water Constraint
A book by former Illinois Senator Paul Simon, now head of the Southern Illinois Univ. Public Policy Institute, focuses on the looming shortage of potable water as population expands. The book, "Tapped Out," describes water resource shortages around the world and in the United States. California is pinpointed as one of the trouble areas. Simon writes: "Every official California water plan projects a huge gap between need and supply. California's population will grow from 31 million today to somewhere between 48 million and 60 million in less than 40 years. Symbolic of California's problems is the story of Owens Lake. Early in this century, Los Angeles-area water authorities understood that they'd face problems as the population grew, so they purchased the third-largest body of water in the state, Owens Lake. Today it is called Owens Dry Lake, because L.A. has sucked it dry." (Source: Parade Magazine, August 23, 1998)

According to a new study on the population trend on the U.S.-Mexico border by the Southwest Center for Environmental Research and Policy, the border population could double by 2020. "These population trends portend serious problems for border communities in terms of infrastructure deficits, availability of water and energy, and negative environmental impacts on water, air and natural resources," according to the report. The Center, based in San Diego, notes that already sewage from overloaded Mexican systems spills across the borders occasionally, and that the most serious looming problem may be water shortages.
(Source: AP, San Diego, May 10, 1999)

ETHNIC CHANGE AND IMMIGRATION
According to the California Dept. of Finance (Change by Race, 1990-96), immigration to the state since 1990 has resulted in a net increase of 188,000 new Hispanic residents and 346,000 Asian and Pacific Island residents. From 1992-96 the state has experienced a net loss of 401,000 white residents. This has led to an increase in Hispanic (26% to 29%) and Asian (9% to 11%) population shares, while the white share declined (from 57% to 53%) and the share of black residents stayed the same (7%).

CALIFORNIA PUBLIC OPINION
Californians are ambivalent as to whether "the increasing diversity that immigrants bring" improves or threatens American culture. About the same number think that immigrants "improve" - 39% and "threaten" - 38%. (The comparable national public opinion is "improve" - 30% and "threaten" - 42%). And they are ambivalent about whether "legal immigration is a problem." They divide 47% to 48% saying it "is" or "is not" a problem. However, most Californians (86%) say "illegal immigrants are a problem." A majority of Californians (54%) favor changing the law so children of illegal immigrants born here are not automatically U.S. citizens -- 40% are opposed. But, most Californians (53%) would not bar illegal immigrants from attending public schools -- 41% would bar them.
(Source: Los Angeles Times, Nov.2, 1997)

A statewide poll by the Public Policy Institute of California released in December 1999 found immigration as the second most important issue facing California (after education). Eight percent of respondents identified immigration as their greatest concern compared with 28 percent for education and seven percent for crime, the third most frequently volunteered response. Other results offer a mixed picture. While most respondents see the state headed in the right direction (62% - 31%), more respondents indicated that they think the state will be a worse place to live in 2020 than a better place (43% - 25%). Some of the reasons for concern may be the growing wealth gap in the state and concern about the environment. By 72% to 23%, respondents said they expect to gap to continue to grow. By a margin of 60% to 37% respondents said they expect the quality of the natural environment to get worse rather than get better. Interestingly, 22 percent of the respondents did not want to hazzard a guess about the state's population size, and among those who did guess, only 13% chose the correct answer (30-35 million) while 46% underestimated the population and only 19% overestimated it.

MIGRANT FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL WORKERS
Governor Pete Wilson told the annual meeting of the California Farm Bureau Federation in December 1996 that "there is no inconsistency whatever between strict enforcement of our immigration laws to secure our borders against illegal immigration and a program that lets legal guest workers provide needed harvest labor when...the domestic labor force proves inadequate to need."

The California Farm Bureau Federation took credit for trying to include a guest worker program in the 1996 immigration reform legislation and for requiring GAO to study the H-2A program when the guest worker program was rejected by the House.
(Source: Rural Migration News, January 1997)

URBAN INSTITUTE STUDY OF IMMIGRATION AND RURAL CALIFORNIA
Writing in the Summer 1998 issue of Immigration Review, Dr. Monica Heppel, Research Director of the Inter-American Institute on Migration and Labor, reviewed a 1997 Urban Institute (UI) study on Povety Amid Prosperity: Immigration and the Changing Face of Rural California. The research study was authored by agricultural-economist Philip Martin and UI immigration researcher Michael Fix. Heppel credits Martin and Fix with clearly demonstrating that today's increased agricultural employment in rural California does not equate with lower poverty levels, but rather the reverse -- higher agricultural sector employment coincides with higher levels of unemployment and poverty. She cites the study's observation that "Traditionally, rural poverty has been combined with cyclical crises that force farms into a downward spiral from which they rarely rebound....In California today, rural poverty occurs in an environment of agricultural prosperity, in the context of a growth industry." This context, she suggests, means that traditional programs designed to alleviate rural poverty need to be rethought.

RAND 1998 STUDY OF IMMIGRATION AND CALIFORNIA'S ECONOMY
The Rand Corporation issued a report in 1998 entitled Immigration in a Changing Economy: California's Experience. The authors were immigration researchers Kevin McCarthy and George Vernez. In general they found both positive and negative economic effects from the state's high levels of both legal and illegal immigration.

The publication was reviewed by Center for Immigration Studies researcher Steven Camarota in the Summer issue of Immigration Review. Among the studies highlights identified by Camarota are the fact that even though immigrants should be credited with creating many new jobs, "...few of these jobs went to natives; overall, in fact, immigration reduces job opportunities for natives." Other findings were that immigrant settlement in California has both significantly lowered wages for high school dropouts and caused unemployment and underemployment. The skills of new immigrants are increasingly out of step with the needs of the state's economy. Overall, immigrants pay less in taxes than they consume in public services, although this varies considerably depending on the immigration category. Vernez and McCarthy conclude that much of the negative effects of current immigration could be alleviated by some changes that would pare immigration back from the current level (near one million per year) to between 300,000 to 800,000 per year.

Writing in the same issue of Immigration Review, demographer Meredith Burke explores the future implications of today's California immigrants. Because Mexican-born women accounted for about one-quarter of all births in the state in 1990, and there is a strong correlation between the educational attainment of parents and children, she speculates that the trend will be large pockets of low-productivity workers and an exacerbation of current income inequalities and increased inter-ethnic strife.

COSTS OF IMMIGRATION
California is expending close to $600 million a year on jailing aliens, according to state officials. This expense has been partially offset by a federal reimbursement program that began in 1994. The total of the federal assistance has been about $500 million per year, and California received $183 million in fiscal 1998. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) says the expense picked up by California taxpayers is "really, in a way, an unfunded mandate." The cost borne by California taxpayers will be much greater next year if present efforts succeed in Congress to cut the appropriation back to $100 million. California, under that funding, would receive only about $31 million in compensation.
(Source: San Diego Union-Tribune, June 11, 1999)

FAIR, 12/99.