California Lt. Governor Upset He Cant' Give Away More Tax Dollars (my title)

Office of Lieutenant Governor CRUZ M. BUSTAMANTE State of California State Capitol, Room 1114 Sacramento, CA 95814

Although I sent out a reminder email to my contacts late last month, I thought one final reminder would be appropriate before the opportunity to apply for a Cal Grant passes. Here is a copy of the email that I sent out in January:

Imagine that $1 million winning lottery tickets were being handed out to kids across the state. The line to get one would be miles long! Cal Grants provide such a golden opportunity for thousands of California's students...

A, B and even C students from working and middle-class families are eligible to receive as much as $9,700 annually over four years through a Cal Grant. These cash awards are not loans and students do not have to pay them back. This is very important, because even those struggling students who do manage to make it through college often graduate with a staggering amount of debt that may take years to repay.

I am deeply disappointed each year when I hear of the millions of unclaimed education dollars in our Cal Grant fund-more than $50 million over the past two years. We cannot let this continue! Cal Grants can provide the unprecedented opportunity to obtain a college education for thousands of kids who may not otherwise have had the chance to succeed. Over a lifetime, on average, people with college degrees earn $1 million more than those who didn't go to college. In California, everyone has an equal chance to fulfill their educational and professional dreams, but not everybody knows that. That's why I need your help to get the word out about Cal Grants! The students of California are counting on you to inform them (and parents or teachers that you may know) about this program.

Thousands of students have failed to receive an award simply because they have not filled out the necessary application. It is such a shame for talented students to waste the chance for a higher education, especially when the applications are available at every high school or at: http://www.csac.ca.gov/pubs/forms/grnt_frm/engcgflyer.pdf.

I created the College Opportunity and Outreach Program (COOP) two years ago to help inform California's high school students about these grants. Click here for more information: http://www.ltg.ca.gov/programs/coop/index.asp or visit my Web site at www.ltg.ca.gov for specific details about this and other programs. If you have any questions, please call or email me at Cruz.Bustamante@ltg.ca.gov.

CRUZ M. BUSTAMANTE Lieutenant Governor Remember, next month is National Women's History Month...

If you would like your email address removed from my contact list, please email me at Cruz.Bustamante@ltg.ca.gov.

MALDEF Campaign touts law on immigrant tuition cut

A statewide public service campaign to promote a law that allows undocumented immigrant college students to pay lower in-state tuition, was launched Monday.

The radio and television campaign by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund is hoping to reach between 10,000 and 12,000 college students who qualify statewide, said Maria Lucero Ortiz, director of MALDEF's program that does outreach to immigrants on higher education issues.

``We're making sure that no one is left behind getting educational opportunities they're legally entitled to,'' Ortiz said, referring to Assembly Bill 540, which took effect last year. ``We know people know about the law but we want to iron out confusion about the exact requirements.''

The commercials will air for three months, primarily in 10 California counties with large immigrant communities, including Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco counties in the Bay Area.

Many non-profit immigrant advocacy groups have been promoting the new law, but there has not been a statewide campaign. No one is sure how many students have taken advantage of the law, which is designed for undocumented children who attended and graduated from high schools in California.

``We're talking about children who were not involved in the decision-making of their parents to immigrate to the United States,'' said Richard Hobbs, Santa Clara County's citizenship director.

The law allows the students to pay the lower, resident tuition rates at community colleges and schools in the California State University and the University of California systems. Non-resident community college students, for example, pay an average of $141 per unit each semester; a resident pays $11 per unit.

``A statewide campaign is definitely needed, and it's great that MALDEF is taking the lead,'' said Lisa Castellanos, community education program director for Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN), a San Jose-based immigrant advocacy group.

``If the main obstacle for some students is how to afford college,'' Castellanos said, ``this kind of campaign is needed to help those students know that they can go to school.''

California was one of the first states in the United States to adopt such a law, along with Utah and New York. Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Wisconsin are considering similar proposals. Texas has a more generous law: It allows undocumented students to also apply for state financial aid.

Despite growing national support for laws like AB 540, a debate rages on. Groups that support strict immigration controls are raising new objections.

``The irony is the state of California is $35 billion in the hole and is looking to extend costly benefits to people who are breaking the law,'' said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a national group that opposed AB 540.

For additional information on AB 540, visit the Web site of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund at www.maldef.org and click on the link for AB 540.

I disagree, based on who becomes an illegal alien in the first place. It seems that the illegals are those who braved deserts, the INS, unscrupulous coyotes, thirst, and hardship to get here and to avoid legal means of entry. In other words, illegals tend to be those with nothing to loose, and tend not to be all that productive.

We see evidence of the costs imposed by illegal aliens in a number of ways. Illegal aliens are far more likely than legal residents of the US to be criminal (1/3 of the California prison population is made up of illegals, none of whom are in prison for the federal crime of immigration violations), ill with communicable diseases (~50% of ER residents and nurses developed positive TB tests over a 3-year period, in a recent study at the Los Angeles Harbor County Hospital, compared to only a few percent who developed positive TB tests at hospitals not overrun by illegals), and on welfare (don't have a statistic for this, but I have worked with a lot of people on welfare, and my personal experience is that illegals are greatly overrepresented in this group).

At the same time, illegals tend to have lower-paying jobs. Particularly in California, with it's progressive tax structure, that means that the illegals pay far less in taxes than the average.

I'm all for education, and I think that the states have the right to determine thier own policies regarding people within thier borders, and to ignore federal law in most instances (federal law is for the feds to enforce). I think that there is a reasonable argument to be made in favor of educating everyone, illegal or not. I just don't think the argument you made is the one.

For my part, I would point out that educating illegals might make it harder for the state to educate people who are even more likely to stay and get good jobs, i.e. native born. Rescources are always limited, and spending those rescources on people who are more likely to wind up in prison, or moving to another country, seems like a bad idea.

Illegal aliens pay taxes, and getting an education will mean they will have the resources to get higher paying jobs -- paying even higher taxes.

I apologize in advance if I offend you but you've just continued an urban legend.

The facts are readily available, published in a study by the National Science Foundation. These are the facts:

California has been educating, at the taxpayers expense, unregulated immigrants and their anchor babies for 40 years in grades K through 12 and through community colleges and the state college system on thru graduate degrees. This study demonstrates:

In the totality of their lifetimes, unregulated immigrants and their anchor babies, including all levels of education, consume approximately 30% more in tax dollars than they pay in taxes. The higher the educational level, the greater the tax deficit they create

This apparent anomoly is caused by the fact that the higher the educational level, the statistically greater the likelyhood that they are employed in public sector jobs.

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