Digby's Hullabaloo

Here We Go

by digby

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.

He goes on to lay out just how those illegals (particularly their US citizen children) are draining the coffers and then halfheartedly shrugs that since “they” are among us we probably need to care for the kids at least, so Obama had better do comprehensive immigration reform.

When times get bad immigrants are always scapegoated. Always. (California was still mired in recession in 1994…) It’s a testament to our growing maturity as a nation that we haven’t devolved into an orgy of immigrant bashing already. I’m surprised.

But it’s coming. California is just beginning to feel the consequences of its disastrous financial situation and it’s going to get worse. The wingnut talkers are already working themselves into a froth. It doesn’t matter that it won’t solve the problem. It doesn’t matter that our problems were actually caused by a bunch of rich, (mostly) white elites. The way right wing populism works is to compain about the wealthy, but kick the dark skinned and immigrant poor. I don’t know why — they just seem to need to do it.