Immigrants California

It is easy to pretend California remains an unchanged place, forever golden. After all, poppies still bloom, along certain stretches of freeway. Middle-class suburbs still march outward in neat, clean rows, in certain towns. The natural marvels endure, Yosemite, the Mendocino Coast, the High Desert. They still make movies in Hollywood and country music in Bakersfield.

It was a tough game that almost came to fisticuffs when one player fouled another. But in the end, it was the red-shirted Salvadorans who beat the Mexicans, 4-2, during a recent adult league soccer game at Delano Recreation Center in Van Nuys. Giovanni Molina, the top scorer with two goals, celebrated at a sidewalk grill where the Nunez family was frying handmade pupusas , a doughy, cheese-and-bean-filled tortilla sold on every corner back home in El Salvador. Molina bought six - three for dinner and three more for tomorrow's lunch.

Rather than being a drain on the economy, immigrants in California contribute $12 billion more each year in taxes and other payments than than they cost in schooling, health care and other services, a new analysis has found. "Immigration is on balance a plus," said Jeffrey S. Passel, director of immigration research at the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank, who unveiled his findings Tuesday in Los Angeles.

California's population will grow more slowly in the next few decades than it has in the past - and that is good for the state's still-struggling economy, according to a new USC report. The study projects that the state's population, now 37.3 million, will continue to increase at a healthy clip - about 1% annually - for years to come. But at least through 2050, we are unlikely to see the boom rates of recent decades, especially the 1980s. "This is more manageable growth and that's good news for California," said Dowell Myers, a USC demography and urban planning professor who co-wrote the report with colleague John Pitkin.

An estimated 830,000 immigrants living in California, predominantly Latino women and children, would lose Medi-Cal health care benefits under immigration changes being considered in Congress, according to a UCLA study being released today. The UCLA study provides the first comprehensive look at how the changes, almost certain to gain final passage, would affect health care for California's poor.

A federal judge has approved a final settlement that could bring to an end years of politically charged consumer litigation against the nation's biggest money-transfer companies. The suits alleged the firms charged hidden and exorbitanxt fees to some of the country's most vulnerable consumers--Mexican immigrants wiring money home.

No lawmaker from California was in a better position this year to protect $1.1 billion in approved federal funding for newly legalized immigrants than Rep. Edward R. Roybal. As one of 13 "cardinals" who head appropriations subcommittees that control the House purse strings, Roybal is a senior Democratic leader with considerable influence.

A major federally mandated study destined to be cited by both sides in the explosive immigration debate has concluded that immigrants are a net boost to the U.S. economy, adding up to $10 billion each year while providing a crucial work force and lowering consumer prices.

Gov. Gray Davis vetoed a bill Monday that would have eased a state law requiring immigrants to prove that they are in the United States legally before obtaining a California driver's license. Davis said the bill, SB 371, by Sen. Hilda Solis (D-La Puente) would "undermine an important security measure intended to deter fraud and illegal immigration."

Gov. Pete Wilson has a Christmas gift for strapped noncitizen families with children. That is, the immigrant families who were "playing by the rules" and living here legally last August when President Clinton signed the federal welfare reform bill. The governor has decided they should keep on receiving welfare checks and Medi-Cal health care. Under the new act, the state could cut off their benefits.

Here's a Hollywood pitch for you: Leading U.S. neurosurgeon started life as a struggling Mexican boy who made it from illegal-immigrant California farmworker to Harvard Med. Not buying it? You should. Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa was that kid and is that man -- associate prof, surgeon and head of the brain tumor stem cell lab at Johns Hopkins. His work puts him, passionately, on the cutting-edge of brain cancer research, and his life wedges him, reluctantly, into the immigration quarrel.

California's policy of granting lower, in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants who graduate from its high schools is facing a challenge in U.S. Supreme Court from those who say it violates federal immigration law. At issue is a little-known provision in a 1996 law that bars states from giving "any postsecondary benefit" to an "alien who is not lawfully present in the United States … on the basis of residence within a state. " Last year, in the first ruling of its kind, the California Supreme Court upheld the state's policy and said it did not conflict with federal law. The justices in Washington may announce as soon as Monday whether they will hear the challenge or dismiss it. They may turn it away because there is no dispute among the lower courts.

Alejandra Tapia expected to go to prison as punishment for her crimes. But she didn't expect to be there longer so she could undergo drug rehabilitation. The U.S. Supreme Court took up her case Monday to decide whether federal judges can sentence prisoners to more time behind bars if it's deemed to be for their own good. The outcome could have a broad effect because more than 80,000 convicted criminals are sentenced each year, and the lower federal courts are split over whether judges can consider "rehabilitation" when setting a prison term.

I've been getting a lot of mail lately telling me what a world-class moron I am. Fixing California's budget mess is simple, the argument goes, and only a dope like me would have trouble seeing the obvious. Eliminate sloth and waste. End public employee pensions. Deport illegals. Problem solved; hoooray for California! As someone who has spent more than 30 years writing about sloth and waste, I can guarantee you there's still more of both out there. But not $26-billion worth, which is what's needed to close the gap for the next fiscal year.

Beautiful music Re " 'Hello, Nathaniel': Obama welcomes Mr. Ayers to D.C.," Column, July 28 Your article covering Nathaniel Ayers' visit to Washington for the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act brought tears to my eyes. Having been a teacher for many years of young people with disabilities, both physical and mental — and also a musician — I have followed yours and Ayers' saga from the beginning. This latest development — Ayers performs for President Obama!

Immigration agents arrested nearly 300 foreign nationals with criminal records during a three-day sweep in California, officials announced Friday. The operation was the largest of its kind and resulted in the arrests of illegal immigrants convicted of robbery, assault and rape, said John Morton, head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The sweep ended Thursday night. Officials said 96 of the 286 arrests took place in Los Angeles County. Among those arrested in the county were a suspected gang member from El Salvador who had a 2004 robbery conviction and a Guatemalan man with a 1993 conviction for lewd acts with a child under 14. "These are not people we want walking our streets," Morton said.

This is America, and the only foreigners here are those who forget it is America. --William Saroyan, from "The Human Comedy." As the nativists screech about immigration, I wonder about the Trejo brothers. There were three of them, Lionel, Manual and Salvador. I knew them as a high school kid, working summers in a feedlot outside Kerman, in the San Joaquin Valley. They had come north long on dreams and, it was presumed, short on documentation.

Delivering California another economic hit, a House-Senate conference committee has stripped $812 million in previously approved federal funding from health and education programs for newly legalized immigrants. The decision to provide $325 million in immigrant funding--most of which will go to California--was a setback to Gov. Pete Wilson and members of the state's congressional delegation, which had pressured legislators to provide the full $1.

A leading California foundation plans today to announce a broad campaign to help Los Angeles immigrants become more active citizens with a new $3.75-million, five-year program to help them learn English, improve job skills and increase civic participation. The California Community Foundation in Los Angeles also is set to release a 75-page report that documents the essential and dynamic role immigrants play in the regional economy and suggests ways to help them become even more productive.

California's Democratic senators introduced legislation Wednesday that would put some illegal immigrant farmworkers on a path to citizenship and revamp a little-used agricultural guest worker program. Flanked by Republican colleagues, immigrant advocates and a California pear grower, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer presented the bill as matter of survival for labor-strapped farmers across the country. "Today, many farmers are on a precipice," Feinstein said.