CA Budget: How much does illegal immigration contribute to Golden State’s budget mess?
By
Wing Chun Geologist
on July 10, 2009 at 07:07 am
The LA Times had a story today about the cost of illegal immigration on the California taxpayer. Because the LA Times has been nothing less than militant advocates for amnesty and citizenship for illegal aliens, I’m shocked that they even admitted that the “undocumented” put any burden on the state.
So as you read the following, remember that it’s likely that the Times my be woefully under-reporting the costs.
I’m not informed enough to dispute the accuracy of the prison and healthcare numbers, but I have a serious problem with the education figure.
Anyone who’s spent any time in a classroom knows that English Learners are significantly more expensive to educate than English speakers. So if an average student costs $7600 a year to educate, you can add a couple grand to the price tag of an English Learner. The cost doesn’t just include special instruction, but special testing that requires one-on-one attention. You can also add in the cost of bi-lingual para-educators who help teachers in classes with large numbers of English learners.
In addition to the extra testing and instruction, students who begin school not speaking English are more likely to repeat one or more grades. An extra year of school and EL instruction can run around $9000. If a student repeats 2 years, then his or her education could end up costing taxpayers $15,000 to $19,000 more than a student who doesn’t repeat a grade.
There are additional costs to schools for after school tutoring (designed to improve chances of underperforming students) which is common in California schools.
I can’t address how the prison and healthcare numbers might be understated, but it’s clear that the LA Times and the amnesty lobby are deliberately underestimating the cost of educating illegal immigrants.
So as you read the following, remember that it’s likely that the Times my be woefully under-reporting the costs.
State welfare officials estimate that cutting off payments to illegal immigrants for their U.S.-born children could save about $640 million annually if it survives legal challenges.
California has roughly 2.7 million illegal residents, according to an April 2009 report from the authoritative Pew Hispanic Center, accounting for about 7% of the state’s population. State officials estimate that they add between $4 billion and $6 billion in costs, primarily for prisons and jails, schools and emergency rooms. Beyond those services, the illegal population adds to the overall cost of other parts of local government, from police and fire protection to highway maintenance and libraries.
[...]
The largest costs to California’s budget from its illegal residents are in three areas:
* Education: The state has no official count of how many students are in the country illegally because school districts do not ask. But the state legislative analyst estimated, based on data from the Pew Hispanic Center, that the state’s 6.3 million public school students include about 300,000 illegal residents. At an annual cost of about $7,626 each, the total comes to nearly $2.3 billion.
* Prisons: In fiscal year 2009-10, California expects to spend about $834 million to incarcerate 19,000 illegal immigrants in the state’s prisons. In Los Angeles County, illegal immigrants add between $370 million and $550 million annually to criminal justice costs, including prosecution, defense, probation and jails, according to Supervisor Mike Antonovich.
* Healthcare: The expected state tab for healthcare in fiscal 2009-10 is $703 million for as many as 780,000 illegal immigrants. Of that, $486 million goes to emergency services. But low-income illegal residents are also eligible for some nonemergency health services, including prenatal and postpartum care, abortions, breast and cervical cancer treatment and certain types of long-term care, such as stays in nursing homes. Most of the nonemergency care for illegal immigrants was authorized by the Legislature in the 1980s.
I’m not informed enough to dispute the accuracy of the prison and healthcare numbers, but I have a serious problem with the education figure.
Anyone who’s spent any time in a classroom knows that English Learners are significantly more expensive to educate than English speakers. So if an average student costs $7600 a year to educate, you can add a couple grand to the price tag of an English Learner. The cost doesn’t just include special instruction, but special testing that requires one-on-one attention. You can also add in the cost of bi-lingual para-educators who help teachers in classes with large numbers of English learners.
In addition to the extra testing and instruction, students who begin school not speaking English are more likely to repeat one or more grades. An extra year of school and EL instruction can run around $9000. If a student repeats 2 years, then his or her education could end up costing taxpayers $15,000 to $19,000 more than a student who doesn’t repeat a grade.
There are additional costs to schools for after school tutoring (designed to improve chances of underperforming students) which is common in California schools.
I can’t address how the prison and healthcare numbers might be understated, but it’s clear that the LA Times and the amnesty lobby are deliberately underestimating the cost of educating illegal immigrants.
