Speech #1040008609

So there is an amendment offered by Senator WELLSTONE that will deal with that. The amendment would require CBO to take all such savings into account. The last issue. and then I will yield the floor. that I deal with in my amendments which will be brought up at a later time is the issue of illegal immigration. I say to my friend in the chair. his State is beginning to feel a little of the problem. The border States right now are feeling a tremendous amount of the problem. I asked the GAO to do a study. It took Governor Wilsons numbers on the cost of serving illegal immigrants in our State. it looked at other cost estimates. and it subtracted the revenues that the Illegal immigrants do in fact provide. We came up with a net cost of $1.4 billion a year to the State of California. I know it is awfully difficult for people from other States to understand this. but half the illegal immigrants in the country wind up in my State. $1.4 billion is a conservative number of what it will cost. The Governor will tell you it is over $2 billion. I tried to be as fair as I could and subtracted some of the revenues. It is at least $1.4 billion. We say this is the unfunded mandates bill. What could be a greater unfunded mandate than illegal immigration. where we in our State have to provide certain services because the Constitution says we must provide them. Of course we are going to provide health care to people if they are bleeding on the street or if they have a disease that could cause an epidemic. Prop. 187 expressed the peoples views on this subject.