California’s secretary of state announced last week that the Billionaire Tax Act, an initiative supported by the state’s labor movement, has qualified for the November ballot. The supposedly one-time tax on individuals with assets exceeding $1 billion would raise an estimated $100 billion over five years. And according to a new Department of Health and Human Services report, California will need every penny of that revenue to keep welfare dollars flowing to the state’s millions of illegal immigrants.
In addition to spending billions of federal and state taxpayer dollars on Medicaid benefits for illegal immigrants, illegal immigrant households also collect thousands of dollars in welfare benefits for their citizen children, including from food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, and the earned income tax credit.
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Such households can also qualify for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program if the state allows it. And California allows illegal immigrant households to receive TANF welfare payments.
In fact, California’s welfare program, CalWORKs, is so generous to illegal immigrant households that an HHS report released this month found that 70% of all illegal immigrant households nationwide that receive TANF payments live in California, at an annual cost of more than $200 million to federal taxpayers.
California’s refusal to work with federal law enforcement is one driver of its illegal immigrant welfare spending, but other large states, such as Illinois and New York, also refuse to help enforce immigration laws, yet they still have far fewer illegal immigrant households on the welfare rolls.
California dominates the nation in welfare payments to illegal immigrant households because its welfare system is unusually generous, its cost of living is unusually high, and its benefit structure allows aid to flow through eligible children even when adults are excluded. CalWORKs offers relatively high cash benefits compared with most states. Only Minnesota, New Hampshire, and California have maximum TANF benefits above 60% of the federal poverty level for a family of three. California’s own Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the average CalWORKs grant is $999 a month this year, with recipients often also eligible for childcare, employment training, mental health counseling, and housing assistance.
California’s system is built around the eligible child, not the adult. While adults face a 60-month CalWORKs time limit, children continue receiving cash aid after that limit is reached. That structure makes illegal immigrant households eligible. The illegal immigrant adult is formally excluded from benefits, but the household still receives benefits through the eligible child.
California’s high cost of living compounds the problem. TANF is means-tested, and low-wage work does not necessarily lift a family above the eligibility threshold in a state as expensive as California. A Center for Immigration Studies analysis found that 94% of illegal-immigrant-headed households had at least one worker, but many still qualified for benefits because of low incomes, children, and state policy choices.
In short, California has paired generous benefits with a child-centered eligibility structure in a state where even working families often remain poor enough to qualify.
DEMOCRATS ARE THE PARTY OF SOCIALISM NOW
There is no reason taxpayers in Florida, Texas, and elsewhere should fund welfare for illegal immigrants in California. If there isn’t the political will to cut off households headed by illegal immigrants, Congress should create a fiscal penalty for states whose generous benefits attract so many illegal immigrant beneficiaries.
California is free to bankrupt itself chasing its sanctuary-state radicalism, but the rest of the country should not be forced to subsidize it. Congress should stop rewarding states that turn welfare into a magnet for illegal immigration and make California pay for every dollar of its own reckless generosity.
