Broke California still robbing schools to pay illegal alien legal fees

Despite California forecasting a $54.3 billion deficit next year, Gov. Gavin Newsome intends to continue funding illegal immigrant legal fees with public school funds.

Newsom is targeting the largest of his draconian cuts on the state’s $71 billion K-14 school budget that would be slashed by $15.2 billion and require teachers to take a 10 percent pay cut, according to the non-partisan Legislative Analyst Office (LAO).

Despite the grim financial picture, Newsome is focused on the fact that 11 million of California’s 39.5 million population are immigrants, with 5.5 million naturalized citizens, 2.75 million with employment visa, and 2.75 million illegal aliens (undocumented). Foreign-born residents also represent at least one-third of the population of five counties: Santa Clara (39%), San Francisco (36%), San Mateo (35%), Los Angeles (34%), and Alameda (33%). Plus, half of children in California have at least one immigrant parent.

With the percentage of state’s immigrant population tripling since the 1970s and over half being Latino, the Democrat Party has made huge politically gains because only 11 percent of Latinos identifying Republican, versus 54 percent that identify as Democrats.

To continue maximizing the number of immigrant voters, the governor intends to make no cuts to the $45 million a year funding for ‘Legal Services for Immigrant Residents’ to provides free services for immigrants of all ages including: (1) community-based outreach, (2) application assistance to become naturalized citizens, (3) consultations for undocumented individuals to discuss with an attorney options for obtaining legal status visas, (4) assistance with DACA renewals, and (5) lawyers to prevent deportations.

He also intends to direct K-14 schools to transfer $10 million a year of constitutionally required Proposition 98 education funds to the California Department of Social Services “to be allocated at the discretion” to provide similar legal services to illegal aliens attending public colleges; including the 4,000 at the University of California system, 10,000 at State University system, and 50,000 to 70,000 attending community colleges.

The Legislative Analyst Office disclosed for the first time that contracted providers of legal services to illegal alien college student are not public defender law firms, but rather top sanctuary city advocates. The DSS chosen top three recipients of K-14 educational funds include $2,250,000 to the United Farm Workers; $2,159,000 to the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights, and $1,250,000 to the Central American Resource Center.

The LAO suggests that the Legislature consider “that the state budget condition in 2019‑20 and 2020‑21 has deteriorated significantly since the Governor introduced his January budget proposal” and reject Newsom’s proposal to expand these services.

Moody’s Credit Rating Service on May 20 issued its latest public budget stress test that projects state revenues will decline, and social service spending will increase over the next year at the fastest pace since the Great Depression. On average, states must cut 18 percent of spending, or twice the cuts during the 2008-2010 Great Financial Crisis.

Moody’s added that due to “the sheer magnitude of the current crisis,” states like California that have a heavier revenue reliance on international trade and are have highly volatile tax collections due to very progressive personal income taxes may need to cut up to 25 percent of all spending.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/broke_california_still_robbing_schools_to_pay_illegal_alien_legal_fees.html