Fiscal Crisis in State Budget Impearls the Immigrant

States are reeling from deficits in their budgets, which by law must be balanced. Most are loath to raise taxes -- but some are doing so. The chosen way is to cut spending. This is beginning to impact the immigrant -- legal as well as undocumented. Massachusetts is proposing to exclude legal residents from its historic health insurance program -- despite the fact they are usually tax-payers. (See New York Times article.)

In California, land of the referendum, Nativists plan to introduce a measure that would end public benefits to the undocumented, challenge the citizenship of their U.S.born chikdren, cut welfare payments to them and impose new birth-cerificate requirements -- e.g., a note their parents are undocumented. A similar proposition won public support in 1996, but was struck down by the federal courts as against the 14th amendment. The fiscal crisis in California -- with a $26 billion short-fall, a squabbling state legislature, an increasingly unpopular governor, and a real unemployment rate of nearly 25% -- seems to create a favorable atmosphere for another try at passing a punitive anti-immigration measure. However successful itmay be in the voting booth, it still faces a stiff challenge in federal court. (See Los Angeles Times article.)