Speech #1030088883

I have great respect for the author of this amendment. We are together a lot more than we are apart. but I hope that those people who are concerned about this project because it costs too much money will understand that there are a lot of other things that cost a lot of money that should not cost a lot of money. I hope that everyone who is concerned about how much money we are spending will look at some legislation that I have sponsored to change the immigration laws in this country. S. 1351. If you want to talk about waste. if you want to talk about how we could have more money for education. let us talk about how we handle immigration. or do not handle immigration in this country. I hope that everyone who supports the Bumpers amendment will support reform of the immigration laws. My colleagues should understand that the State of California is building a new school every day to take care of immigrants moving into California. My colleagues should understand that last year In Los Angeles County. in the county hospitals. almost 70 percent of the babies born were born to illegal immigrants. MediCal. Californias version of Medicaid. estimates that Californians pay over $700 million annually to provide health care for illegal immigrants. Children of the illegal immigrants count for more than 65 percent of births in the hospitals. almost 70 percent of the births in the hospitals. The people we have in prison. almost 25 percent of them are illegal immigrants. So I hopeI am not going to go into a lot more detail about my legislationbut I hope that everyone who Is here today talking about wasteful spending will understand some real waste. with the Inordinate costs we have in education. our criminal justice system. welfare costs because of legal immigration into this country and we have to put a stop to that. There is some real money there to be saved. We can spend money on a lot of scientific things.