FROM SACRAMENTO — Based on my e-mail, a lot of folks think the solution to California's state budget deficit is to round up all the illegal immigrants and truck them down to Mexico.
Wrong. Even if it were logistically possible and the deportees didn't just climb off the truck and hitch another ride back up north, their absence from the state wouldn't come close to saving enough tax dollars to balance a budget that has a $42-billion hole projected over the next 17 months.
Painful cuts in education, healthcare and social service programs still would be needed. Sharp tax increases would be required.
That said, let's be honest: Illegal immigration does cost California taxpayers a substantial wad, undeniably into the billions.
But it hasn't been PC for officeholders to talk about this for years, ever since Gov. Pete Wilson broke his pick waging an aggressive campaign for Proposition 187. That 1994 ballot initiative sought to bar illegal immigrants from most public services, including education. Voters approved the measure overwhelmingly, but it was tossed out by the courts.
Wilson was demonized by Democrats within the Latino community. And many think the Republican Party never has recovered among this rapidly growing slice of the electorate.
So it's not a topic that comes easily to the tongues of politicians, even Republicans.
Besides, most of the policy issues are out of California's hands. The federal government has jurisdiction over the border. Federal law decrees that every child is entitled to attend public school, regardless of immigration status. And every person -- here illegally or not -- must be cared for in hospital emergency rooms.
But the state does add a few benefits that aren't required.
And as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders dig into the books trying to find billions in savings, at least a brief look at what's being spent on illegal immigrants seems in order.
First, nobody seems to know exactly. Numbers vary widely, depending which side they come from in the ongoing angry debate over whether people who entered the country illegally to work should be allowed to stay or loaded on the southbound truck.
But here are some no-agenda numbers:
There were 2.8 million illegal immigrants living in California in 2006, the last year for which there are relatively good figures, according to the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. That represented about 8% of the state's population and roughly a quarter of the nation's illegal immigrants. About 90% of California's illegal immigrants were from Latin America; 65% from Mexico.
