Posted on 09/25/2026 7:19:16 AM PDT by MtnClimber
California runs the nation’s largest welfare system, devoting more than $180 billion annually to food, health care, and other programs for the poor and downtrodden. To sustain the arrangement, the state imposes the nation’s highest tax rates.
In theory, these programs are supposed to help struggling Californians. In reality, many serve large numbers of illegal immigrants. Today, California oversees a shadow welfare system that allows noncitizens to receive health care, rental assistance, college grants, tax credits, low-cost car insurance, and even smartphones on the taxpayers’ dime.
We visited four public-services offices in Southern California, each of which admitted that illegal aliens can enroll in public-welfare programs or receive benefits on their children’s behalf. In total, California taxpayers spent at least $11 billion subsidizing illegal immigrants in the last fiscal year. The state’s shadow welfare system, it seems, shows no signs of slowing down.
Local officials were remarkably transparent. In Glendale, we spoke to a welfare officer about California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), a state-funded alternative to Supplemental Security Income that provides monthly cash assistance to low-income noncitizens who are elderly or disabled.
“If [you are] a citizen, you cannot get CAPI,” he said. “I don’t care about legal or not. Not being [a] citizen [is the key].”
In Los Angeles, we heard more of the same. We asked another welfare officer about the benefits available to illegal immigrants and their children. While some state programs are closed to illegals, we learned, they are open to those aliens’ U.S.-born children.
“If you were born here and the child was born here, you get money for two,” the officer said of CalWORKs, the state’s version of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. “Because she is not and the child is, she only gets money for the child, and not for her.”
These benefits add up. In California, illegal immigrants can qualify for CAPI, public health insurance, and various tax credits. Their children qualify for others, including CalWORKs and, as in other states, Section 8 rental subsidies. All told, a family of five in California with two illegal-alien parents, two U.S.-born children, and one illegal-alien grandparent can receive public services worth more than $100,000 per year.
State leaders are proud of it. In a recent podcast episode, Governor Gavin Newsom bragged about his “controversial” decision to extend Medi-Cal coverage to illegal immigrants. His wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, encouraged people to sign up for the California Earned Income Tax Credit, a program whose promotional materials assure applicants that “no Social Security number” is “no problem.”
The governor’s office did not respond to our comment request by deadline.
How is all this possible?
Federal law generally prohibits states from using federal dollars to serve illegal aliens. To dodge those restrictions, California created parallel state- and locally funded programs that allowed the state to extend benefits to illegal immigrants. Perhaps as a result, more than one in four California residents today is foreign-born.
Medicaid is a good example. Federal law prohibits states from using federal dollars to provide wraparound coverage to illegal immigrants. So, California used a state-funding “bucket” within its Medi-Cal program to extend “full-scope” coverage to illegal aliens. The expansions enrolled some 1.7 million people, costing the state an estimated $10 billion annually—more than twice what the state legislative analyst originally projected.
California also uses a distinct legal category that enables certain migrants to qualify for state programs. The state deems certain aliens to be “permanently residing under color of law”—living in California with the “knowledge and permission” of immigration enforcement—and allows them to use this designation to enroll in Medi-Cal, CAPI, and other government programs. In practice, because aged or disabled individuals are typically not deported, this means elderly foreign retirees can arrive in California and receive extensive benefits.
Another way that California shuffles cash to illegal immigrants is through those aliens’ children. CalWORKs allows illegal-immigrant parents to receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born kids. BenefitsCal, the state’s welfare clearinghouse, even tells applicants that the program will accept a “statement” that the applicant “intend[s] to file or [is] taking steps to become federally eligible” to qualify for the program.
This model—permissive rules and large loopholes—costs the state billions per year. As benefits and eligibility continue to expand, that figure will only increase in the years ahead.
California shows no sign of paring back this largesse. In 2022, Newsom signed a bill into law that extended taxpayer-funded food benefits to illegal low-income residents. Beginning next October, qualified Californians 55 and older will become eligible for that program, regardless of immigration status. California’s Legislative Analyst estimates that it could cost up to an additional $400 million a year.
The state also has no citizenship requirements for various programs. California’s state-sponsored Low Cost Auto Insurance Program tells illegal-immigrant drivers that they may qualify for subsidized coverage “regardless of immigration status.” In 2025, Newsom signed legislation banning California LifeLine—a program that provides free phones and cell service—from requiring applicants to produce a Social Security number.
As we walked around several Los Angeles welfare offices, we saw cellphone providers pitching California LifeLine plans. When we approached one provider, a representative told us that applicants can use a Mexican consular identification card to enroll. The program’s website confirms as much.
Between health insurance, cash transfers, and other programs, California’s shadow welfare system doles out generous benefits to illegal immigrants at taxpayers’ expense. Ordinary Californians, meantime, are depleting their savings, working long hours, and taking on tons of debt simply to pay the bills.
Under Gavin Newsom’s social contract, working Americans must not only contend with rising taxes and ballooning living costs but also bear the burden of financing benefits for illegal immigrants and their families. In other states, citizenship establishes who qualifies for taxpayer-funded benefits. In California, citizenship merely determines who pays.
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
If you're a Californian and this doesn't bother you dumb azz, you really need to knock of the crybaby booschidt about gas and groceries prices. You've got all kinds of money if you can subsidize foreigners.
Since ever, Immigrants are required “Not to be public charge!”.
That’s the law, since anybody can remember.
If the are staying here, they need at minimum get themself some private sponsor!
Pages 6-10 specifically. Here are excerpts:
The welfare state safety net, frayed and weak in the United States, stronger but more costly in Europe and Japan, has been strained and torn throughout the industrialized democracies by pressures of migration and economic change that do not respect borders. The safety net will have to be redesigned, fundamental ideas of public social responsibility reconceived, and a new social contract written in a form consistent with the imperatives of a competitive global economy. How do we begin to think about that task in America?
As John Maynard Keynes taught us, a full-employment economy is the only economy which both seems fair and offers hope to everyone. And it is important to keep in mind the stakes attached to this issue; here we are talking about far more than just "work." As the sociologist William Julius Wilson reminds us, employment provides "the framework for daily behavior and patterns of interaction."
And so we have today a "system" of employment that is closed to some, does not provide significant advancement opportunity to the working poor, does not stimulate broad-based economic growth, and is perceived by many as unfair. This adds up to a clear warning that our situation requires careful analysis and an aggressive search for a better way.
The Foundation's Response
These implications and the broad outlines of the new economic context force us to think afresh about the issues of equity, basic rights, and the construction of social capital.
We are at a point where we can discern generally the new challenges to these common values.
— The transition to an information-age economy exacerbates the isolation within the United States and elsewhere of those who live in persistent poverty, are uneducated, or suffer discrimination.
— The transition to a global economic system reduces the effectiveness of compensatory systems and safety nets embedded solely in the nation-state, and spurs the search for approaches that can operate effectively within the emerging global context.
— The migrations, conflicts and cultural collisions that are part of a world of transnational flows require new frameworks for understanding differences among peoples, religions, and cultures and new avenues for cooperation across those differences.
Against this background, the Foundation has broadened the focus of its Basic Rights program in the U.S. to reflect the increasing diversity of America, and asks its grantees to consider what aspects of their concerns may emerge as universal rights which transcend the immediate limits of a national boundary or a specific judicial system
Most globalist socialist BS is just that. But when the President of the Rockefeller foundation slips in a reference to a capitalized Basic Rights program 33 years ago in a sentence structured as it is and considering the changes that took place since then I think it's safe to say we best pay closer attention to bureaucrats so remarkably transparent they don't care don’t care about legal or not when not being [a] citizen [is the key].
I just can't forget how the RF slipped one over on the American taxpayer so long ago.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.