This Los Angeles Times editorial discusses what Governor Schwarzenegger has to say about our projected $21 billion state deficit.

But he's seen enough disastrous budget years now to know how readily -- and wrongly -- many people blame the state's problem on illegal immigration.

They are not immigrants. The legal term is: illegal alien. Immigrants are people who move here legally with the intention of staying and becoming Americans.

But illegal immigration didn't get California into its budget fix, and full federal payment -- an unlikely prospect -- wouldn't get us out.

So what? This doesn't mean that we shouldn't point out the costs illegal aliens bring - and ask for compensation from their home countries, or the federal government. The guy who breaks into my car isn't the cause of all of my problems, but I'm sure as heck going to prosecute and sue him if he is caught.

Playing to the anti-immigrant chorus, even in a quest for federal money, undermines the message every Californian must hear: We cannot currently pay for those programs that we consistently list as our top priorities, including first-rate education, transportation and public safety, and it's not because of the size of the undocumented population. It's because of our appetite for services, the structure of our tax system and the dysfunction of our government.

Most of us are not anti-immigrant. We are against illegal aliens being allowed to stay here and live off our foolishly socialistic systems. But the rest of the statement is correct, though I suspect accidentally. The editorial board wants to raise taxes, but our high taxes actually contribute to the problem.

He has been an outstanding spokesman in the fight to combat greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, dueling with the deniers on the weekend talk shows and touting California's policy progress around the globe.

One of the last things California needs is to pushing residents and strangle businesses with restrictions under the phony guise of "global warming" prevention.

But perhaps because his career has put him so directly in touch with the popular imagination, he also gives voice to the common wisdom of the day -- even if that wisdom is wrong, as it is when it assigns the state's troubles to public workers, welfare recipients and illegal immigrants.

Yes, it is a problem when there are millions of retired public workers whose retirement pensions continue to draw billions of dollars in taxpayer money.

Yes, it is a problem when too many people are drawing welfare for too long from a system that skipped the Clinton-era reforms that improved the welfare situation in other places.

Yes, it is a problem when unskilled illegal aliens come here and take much more public money than they contribute in taxes, and even worse when they commit identity theft and violent crimes.

Unsurprisingly, the editorial doesn't go on to say what the "real" problems are.

Since splitting the state is a dream that will never happen, some things that will help:

1. Making public employee unions get written permission on an annual basis from each member before using that member's dues for political causes (= to promote the growth of government).

2. Changing the legislature to a part-time, unicameral, and overall smaller legislature.

3. Allowing business to flourish by reducing regulations, restrictions, red tape, and taxes rates.

4. Reducing serious crime by asking the federal government to bring in then nation guard to "sweep and hold"gang-infested neighborhoods, and for ICE to deport illegal alien gang members.

5. Requiring photo ID to vote.

6. Running our prisons like they are run in other states that spend far less per prisoner.

7. Telling  all incoming government employees from this moment forward that they will be responsible for saving for their own retirement; they can do it through professional associations and unions if they want. Aside from compensation for ongoing work, the taxpayers will not pay any more.

8. Spending tax money on maintaining existing infrastructure and core obligations; encourage private development/operation of new infrastructure, schools, etc.

In addition to setting the stage for more criticism of Prop 13, it looks like the paper is trying to soften us up for the illegal alien shamnesty push by Obama and company.

I wonder what the editorial board would do if it could be proven that illegal aliens were making marriage neutering more unlikely? I think it would put them all in the fetal position... which is dangerous for a paper that supports abortion.

What has your government school student been taught in the last week or so about Christopher Columbus? Associated Press writer Christine Armario had an article about that, called "A Darker Side of Columbus Emerges in US Classrooms". Oh brother... er, uh,... oh sibling-or-anyone-at-all-because-isn't-it-all-the-same?

TAMPA, Fla. – Jeffrey Kolowith's kindergarten students read a poem about Christopher Columbus, take a journey to the New World on three paper ships and place the explorer's picture on a timeline through history.

Kolowith's students learn about the explorer's significance - though they also come away with a more nuanced picture of Columbus than the noble discoverer often portrayed in pop culture and legend.

"Nuanced" is codeword for "Leftist trashing of someone who actually did something". Leftists should note... Columbus was working for government! A European government, no less.

"And we talked about how he was very, very mean, very bossy."

Yeah, he didn’t even allow his sailors to unionize. Didn't give them MLK Day off, either.

Although lessons vary, many teachers are trying to present a more balanced perspective of what happened after Columbus reached the Caribbean and the suffering of indigenous populations.

They never suffered before, you see.

"The whole terminology has changed," said James Kracht, executive associate dean for academic affairs in the Texas A&M College of Education and Human Development.

"You don't hear people using the world 'discovery' anymore like they used to. 'Columbus discovers America.' Because how could he discover America if there were already people living here?"

How about he "kick-started America"? Let's face it. It was the start of a new direction in history and eventually led to the rise of the greatest nation on God's green Earth.

In Texas, students start learning in the fifth grade about the "Columbian Exchange" - which consisted not only of gold, crops and goods shipped back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean, but diseases carried by settlers that decimated native populations.

Well maybe the natives should have offered free universal health care to the illegal aliens?

In McDonald, Pa., 30 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, fourth-grade students at Fort Cherry Elementary put Columbus on trial this year - charging him with misrepresenting the Spanish crown and thievery. They found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison.

Let's throw Thomas Jefferson in prison too - that slavedriver.

The day is an especially sensitive issue in places with larger native American populations.

Okay, how about we renamed it International Tobacco Day, to recognize a major accomplishment of the natives?

"We have a very large Alaska native population, so just the whole Columbus being the founder of the United States, doesn't sit well with a lot of people, myself included," said Paul Prussing, deputy director of Alaska's Division of Teaching and Learning Support.

Yeah, because life under the Soviets would have been so much better.

Patrick Korten, vice president of communications for the Catholic fraternal service organization the Knights of Columbus, recalled a note from a member who saw a lesson at a New Jersey school.

The students were forced to stand in a cafeteria and not allowed to eat while other students teased and intimidated them - apparently so they could better understand the suffering indigenous populations endured because of Columbus, Korten said.

I guess reenacting human sacrifice - as practiced by some native civilizations - just wasn't practical?

In Kolowith's Tampa class, students gathered around a white carpet, where they examined a pile of bright plastic fruits and vegetables, baby dolls, construction paper and other items as they decided what would be best for their voyage.

"Do you think it would be good to take babies on a long and dangerous boat ride?" he asked the class. "No!" they replied.

Did he then turn it into an abortion lesson?

Meanwhile, Crawford's Pennsylvania class dressed up as characters from the era, assigned roles for a mock trial and put Columbus on the stand. Out of a jury of 12 students, nine found him guilty of the charges.

Did they then learn that means a mistrial, and the defendant gets to either get a new trial or goes free?

Will California schools present a "balanced" portrayal of Harvey Milk? After all, every human being who every accomplished anything has been a flawed person (there's only one exception).

This kind of thing is yet another reason not to send your kids to the Leftist-controlled government schools. The schools should be focusing on accomplishment and positive examples to emulate, and handing down American culture.

When different cultures collide, especially when one is more technologically advanced that the other, it isn't pretty. Find me an example of where is has even been (all those hoping for aliens from a distant planet to come here take note)? I do not excuse any form of theft or assault, but how about some context? Were Europeans supposed to never ever go anywhere because of smallpox? They didn't really understand how it was transferred, nor immunity.

Why not use Columbus Day to teach the importance of having a good immigration and border control system?

I apologize for my lack of blogging yesterday. I celebrated Columbus Day by going to an Indian gaming casino with a Leftist friend, who was busy enjoying tobacco while explaining to me how evil Columbus was. Meanwhile, this person thinks we don't need a strong immigration/naturalization policy. Go figure.

I suppose when people blame Columbus for bringing disease to the natives, we should ask why the natives didn't recognize that Columbus, as an illegal alien, had a right to free health care on the dime of the natives? Those natives should have cured the Europeans of their diseases.

More research confirms what we already know from other research and experience. Deborah Bonello reports from Mexico City in this LATimes.com blog posting.

Most Mexicans think their lives would be better in the United States, and one in three said they'd move to the U.S. if they could, according to the latest findings on Mexican attitudes from the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

Shamnesty would only encourage more of them to come here illegally, as amnesty in the mid-80s encouraged 20 million illegal aliens to flood into the nation.

Half of those who said they'd migrate north of the border said they would do so without permission, although recent data on immigration suggests that the flow of Mexicans north is slowing.

Slowing. That means the rate of the increase in the influx is slowing down – and that means we're still getting more.

They’re right, of course - life is better here. They ones who don't know that simply don't know enough. Or maybe they have outstanding warrants here.

In news that is not unrelated, the Los Angeles City Council has voted to place limits on how many roosters households can have.

Here's a story by the Orange County Register's Jon Cassidy that I couldn't let slip by.

A man arrested and charged with murdering a prostitute at a Garden Grove hotel is a gang member who has been deported to Mexico three times in the last decade, Garden Grove police said at a press conference this morning.

Cesar Gomez, 34, of El Monte, is scheduled to be arraigned on a murder charge Monday at West Justice Center.

He is accused of strangling Ashley Lilly, 24, of Inglewood, to death at the Crowne Plaza Anaheim Resort on Harbor Boulevard some time late Aug. 20 or early Aug. 21.

I'm no supporter of prostitution (financially or morally), but that someone is a prostitute does not make her any less of a human being, and does not justify her murder. Of course, she made the chances of a crime like this against her more likely when she chose to engage in her own criminal activity.

Lilly had been severely beaten in the face and choked by hand, and her room had been ransacked, police said. She had not been sexually assaulted, police said.

What a waste of human potential this murderer is.

After getting some of his rap sheet, we get this quote:

"We arrest these criminals, the DA does a good job prosecuting them, but beyond that our system is overwhelmed and broken," Polisar said. "Our borders are like revolving doors for these criminals. It's like sweeping back the ocean with a whisk broom."

We should bill Mexico for every dime we spend on this guy. Si se puede.

Most of the letters printed in today's Los Angeles Times deal with issues surrounding illegal aliens, prompted by earlier items in the paper.

Haydee Pavia of Laguna Woods wrote:

Our immigration system is not broken, and we don't need immigration reform. It is our government that is broken, and we need government reform.

We need to move away from socialism and towards free markets; away from payroll taxes.

David Eggenschwiler of Los Angeles wrote:

Let us have strong border control,

Yes.

but let us also have legalization of long-term illegal immigrants

Only if they have otherwise been law-abiding or they have served admirably in our armed forces, and only if the border has been secured.

Bob Braley of Bakersfield wrote:

Remittances are a huge drain on the state and federal levels. The amount of money leaving the country is enormous.

Yes.  While we are subsidizing the education, health care, emergency services, legal protections, recreation, housing, meals, transportation, and utilities of illegal aliens and their children, they are sending money out of the country.  If someone has money to send out of the country, they are not in need of taxpayer subsidies and shouldn't be receiving them.

Wendy Velasco of Whittier wrote:

Private charities provide spotty help at best. Taxes are the fairest way to spread the cost around.

Hey, because government programs have worked so well and efficiently and have eliminated want!

Cristina Martinez-Thompson of Signal Hill wrote:

Why is it that during times of economic crisis, the most vulnerable are blamed?

You're right.  We should be focusing on illegal aliens all of the time.

What about those of the legal population committing welfare fraud, Medicare fraud and Social Security fraud?

We should go after them, too.

These vulnerable workers do pay taxes. When they purchase items, they are paying sales tax.

There are many, many other taxes.  On the whole, these people cost a lot of more than they are contributing.

We cannot underestimate the significance of contributions these illegal immigrants make to the farming/agricultural/food processing/packaging business.

I'd gladly pay more for food out of the savings we'd get if we were spending less on prosecuting and incarcerating illegal aliens, educating illegal aliens, infrastructure for illegal aliens, and health care for illegal aliens.

Tim Aaronson of El Cerrito wrote:

The standout in the recitation of costs because of illegal immigration is the portrait of Delia Godinez and her five children. The family receives $650 each month from the state's CalWorks program, $500 in federal food stamps and other vouchers and unmentioned thousands in public schooling benefits. This is for one illegal immigrant family.

The public schooling would be about $60,000 per year.  This means they are getting about $73,800 in tax benefits, not counting other public services.

Tony Stengel of Los Angeles wrote about quality of life:

Even parking becomes impossible when half of my neighbors are living nine people in a one-bedroom place with five cars outside.

Yeah, it's more than just the money.

Congressperson Maxine Waters wrote:

As a member of Congress, I work hard to make sure that federal funding for school districts is maximized so this center and other area schools can best serve our students and communities.

How about keeping the federal government from taking the money out of California in the first place?

Illegal aliens held mock graduation ceremonies yesterday.  Why?  Well, read on.  Cindy Carcamo and Jessica Terrell of the Orange County Register report.

About 100 students in caps in gowns – some illegal immigrant college students in Orange County – made up the more than 250 attendees who support the DREAM Act.

Is it really news that Group A wants Group B to pay for Group A’s voluntary choices meant to benefit Group A, despite law-breaking by Group A?

The act would allow undocumented students to apply for legal permanent resident status, protect them from deportation and make them eligible for student loans and federal work study programs.

Oh, I'm sure they have plenty of documents.

Tuesday's crowd at the Teamsters Local 952 Hall in Orange cheered and others cried when a Santa Ana College student by the name of Abraham gave something of a testimonial in rap-song form.

It's shocking, shocking! that the union would allow their facility to be used for this.

"I still have a dream," said Abraham who only gave his first name. But right now, "We are doctors, teachers and lawyers, living in terror from ICE."

Ah yes… illegal aliens would all be rocket scientists of NASA if only they were given a pass and subsidies.

Students from Cal State Fullerton, Santa Ana College, UCI and other nearby higher-education institutions wore caps and gowns and signs – some reading "What now?" at the Orange ceremony.

So they've already received taxpayer-subsidized higher education, in addition to all of the taxpayer funded education they had before that.  Our generosity is repaid with... demands for more.

Supporters of the bill have said that students find themselves without jobs after college due to their legal status.

A lot of citizens are having trouble finding jobs right now.  But I understand people in prison also have trouble finding jobs because of their "legal status".

How about studying immigration law so that you can explain what is going on to your parents? Our studying the business, political, and social climate of your home countries, so you can go back there and make it better?

The illegal aliens and socialists celebrated May Day in Los Angeles, no doubt spreading the Mexican flu.

Here is is the Los Angeles Times story by Anna Gorman.

Waving American flags and pictures of President Obama, thousands of protesters took to the streets Friday in May Day rallies in Southern California to promote immigration reform.

At least they figured out they should wave American flags... although I'm sure there were plenty of Mexican flags there, too.  "Immigration reform" is a nice euphemism for shamnesty.

"We have a lot of hope," said Ricarda Garcia, an illegal [alien] from Mexico who has attended the marches for several years. But Garcia, 36, a housekeeper, said she also feels a sense of urgency because there is little work for her and her husband, a construction worker. "I feel more necessity now, " she said. "There aren't jobs."

So the urgency is for... what... legal welfare?

Organizers blamed the relatively low turnout on the swine flu and the reluctance of many to take time off work.

It couldn't be the fact that the rallies have been a huge failure, other than one year when they were able to get money by throwing bottles at cops and then claiming police brutality when the cops responded.

Hector Gonzalez, 24, a student at Cal Poly Pomona, said he hoped that the Dream Act, intended to help illegal [alien] high school graduates, would be among the first legislative reforms.

No!  It is bad enough that we don't have separation of school and state.  It is worse that we are subsidizing the education of citizens of other countries.

With legal status, Gonzalez said, he could contribute more to the country's ailing economy.

And people who are currently incarcerated could contribute more if they were let out of prison.

"People like me are here to help Obama," said Gonzalez, who came to the U.S. as a toddler. "I just need a little step forward."

Get that... help Obama... not America.

The article goes on to cast people who are against shamnesty for illegal aliens being against immigration, which, for the most part, is not true.  Then we get this...

Although most immigrant rights protesters Friday called for an end to raids, arrests and deportations, a small but spirited group of mostly South Asians marching in Artesia said their biggest concerns were labor exploitation and racial profiling.

Sultan Ahmed, a 48-year-old mortgage broker, said Pakistani immigrants like himself are disproportionately pulled over for airport security checks and unduly delayed for citizenship application approvals.

Well, you know, as it turns out, people from Pakistan are disproportionately involved in terrorism.

So it isn't just about shamnesty and socialism - it is about letting our guard down when it comes to terrorism, too.

Two stories of note about illegal aliens are in the Los Angeles Times.  I have made some corrections to make the quoted text more legally precise.  Teresa Watanabe has this story about how recession has impacted the flow of illegal aliens, who are moving on to other places besides the usual states.

A study released Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center has documented a change in trend: After years of rapid growth, illegal [alien invasion] is slowing down in California, with the state's share of the nation's estimated 11.9 million [illegal aliens] dropping to 22% from 42% in 1990, the study showed.

Slowing down - not stopping.  And 12 million is a lowball.

The state still has the largest concentration of illegal [aliens] in the nation, with 2.7 million -- a figure that has nearly doubled since 1990.

I'm sure California has more than that.

But, in a trend that began with California's recession in the 1990s, more migrants are bypassing the state for other areas of the country. The number of illegal [aliens] outside the nation's six traditional "first stop" states of California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey and New York has increased sevenfold, to nearly 5 million in 2008 from 700,000 in 1990, according to Jeffrey S. Passel, the study's coauthor and a Pew Center senior demographer.

Enjoy, all of you people who fled Mexifornia!

Nearly half of the households headed by [illegal aliens] have young children, twice the rate of native-born households. And nearly three-fourths of their children were U.S.-born citizens.

Anchor babies.

The children of [illegal aliens] make up about 10% of California students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

Yet another reason I am in favor of the separation of state and school.

The study, co-written by D'Vera Cohn, a Pew Research Center senior writer, found that three-quarters of illegal immigrants are Latino, mostly from Mexico. On average, they tend to work in low-skilled jobs such as farming and construction, earn markedly less than the median national income and have lower educational levels than U.S.-born residents.

No!  I’m shocked – SHOCKED!

For instance, 47% of illegal immigrant adults ages 25-64 have less than a high school education compared with 8% for U.S.-born residents. The immigrants' 2007 median household income was $36,000, compared with $50,000 for the U.S.-born, and they did not attain markedly higher incomes the longer they lived in the United States, unlike legal immigrants, the study found.

I'm sure the answer is to simply give them shamnesty!

Actually, no.  The ultimate answer is more privatization, less socialism.

Anna Gorman's article says Big Labor is now in lockstep on promoting shamnesty.

The nation's top two labor federations announced a framework Tuesday for comprehensive immigration reform, setting aside differences with the hope of pushing legislation through this year.

That would be shamnesty.

The agreement, supported by the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win federation, supports the legalization of the nation's 12 million [illegal aliens] and the formation of an independent commission to analyze the labor market's needs and assess shortages for the admission of future foreign workers. The unions oppose any new guest worker programs that would allow employers to bring foreigners in on a temporary basis.

This is all about increasing the number of union members so that union management has more compulsory dues money with which to play.

[Illegal alien advocate] groups also plan to hold news conferences, town hall meetings and hearings across the nation to mobilize support for reform and to highlight what they say is the harm caused by a lack of legislation.

We don't lack legislation.  We lack enforcement.

In addition, the unions included border security as a tenant of their plan but wrote in the agreement that enforcement should not be the responsibility of local law enforcement and should focus on "criminal elements."

Illegal aliens are criminals by definition.  I'm sure the unions are in favor of border security – unionized border security.

See some of the other stuff I've written about the illegal alien situation.

The ACLU of SoCal and the National Immigration Law Center have filed a lawsuit against federal authorities over the use of a detention facility in downtown L.A.  I found this LATimes.com blog entry from Anna Gorman.

According to the lawsuit...

The center is "regularly overcrowded, causing violence, safety hazards, and humiliation," while detainees are denied access to attorneys and courts and are rarely provided drinking water or a change of clothing...

Maybe the feds are just trying to make them feel at home?

Detainees are held at the center during the day and then shuttled to local jails at night and on weekends, which the suit said "effectively cuts detainees off from contact with the outside world" and deprives them of their basic needs.

"They are detaining people in inhumane conditions, grossly unsanitary and disgusting conditions," said Marisol Orihuela, a staff attorney at the ACLU.

The places most of these people are from are just like that.

During a tour of the processing center several months ago, Los Angeles assistant field office director Eric Saldana said the agency was doing its best to keep detainees there for just 12 hours at a time and quickly move them into facilities designed to hold them for longer periods. Sometimes, however, he said, detainees are kept longer or brought back for several days because of delays in accessing travel documents for deportation or because of limited space at local jails.

Nowhere in the text of the blog entry will you find anything about these people being illegal aliens or otherwise being criminals.  That is why they are there.  The piece makes it look like they are "immigrants" – not even "illegal" ones.  Immigrants are people who come here legally, with the intention of staying.  These people are illegal aliens.  That is the legal term, at least until Obama changes it.  We can solve our problems by simply relabeling them, you see.  Just like with terrorists, wars, and genocidal maniacs.

The processing center holds up to 250 detainees. There are six large holding cells surrounding a central area with desks, where the detainees are photographed, fingerprinted and interviewed. Each cell has a phone, a bathroom and a bench around the edge. There are also smaller cells for families or juveniles.

Detainees have access to medical staff and can ask to see a judge, Saldana said.

In all seriousness, we do have a responsibility to those we take into custody. Of course, if the ACLU was not already so meddlesome, these people could probably have been processed faster in the first place and sent back home more quickly.

In case you haven't been paying attention to Obama's visit to SoCal, his teleprompter made it clear that we're going to have to ramp up our efforts to fight illegal alien shamnesty again.

It's going to be more difficult than the last time, because of Obama's election and other Democrat gains.  But we must make it clear that it is unacceptable to offer ANY deals to illegal aliens until it is proven that our borders have been secured and that we can and will remove aliens who overstay their legal visits.

People already have a path to citizenship.  It's called DOING THINGS THE RIGHT WAY TO BEGIN WITH!

We should not, in any way, reward people for breaking our immigration laws.

The plight of illegal aliens getting taxpayer-subsidized higher educations in California was given Column One in the Los Angeles Times today.  Jason Song reports.

She's an illegal immigrant, so she isn't eligible for most forms of state and federal financial aid. The University of California system, by policy, does not require applicants to disclose their citizenship status: Officials say their goal is to find the best students, not to enforce immigration law. UCLA officials say they aren't even sure how many undocumented students are on their campus.

Remember to file your tax returns and be happy with an "IOU" for your refund!

In California and other states, taxpayers subsidize higher education for illegal aliens.  Now, Anna Gorman of the Los Angeles Times has a story on a cast about this coming before the California Supreme Court.

California's highest court is poised to be the next battleground in the debate over benefits for illegal immigrants as the justices have agreed to hear arguments on the constitutionality of a state law allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities.

Hey, maybe the court will "find" a "right" to for everyone to come to California, legally or not, and get subsidies for higher education.

The decision could affect hundreds of illegal immigrant students who attend community colleges, Cal State and UC campuses and who say they would not be able to afford a higher education if required to pay out-of-state tuition, which can cost more than triple the amount that residents pay.

So a citizen in Arizona who wants to go to a University of California campus must pay more than an illegal alien.

But the outcome could have a broader effect -- at least nine other states, including Oklahoma, New York and Texas, have similar laws providing the reduced fees to illegal immigrants. Although a court decision would not be legally binding in other states, politicians around the country are looking at California as a litmus test for future legal challenges.

Do you know where your tax dollars are?

"U.S. citizens should have at least the same rights as undocumented immigrants," said one of the plaintiffs, Aaron Dallek, an Illinois native who graduated from UC Berkeley in 2006.

Very few, if any of them, are undocumented.  Most have plenty of documents, phony or otherwise.  But I disagree that there is a right to a state-provided education – for anyone.

The California Supreme Court case revolves around a 2001 state law, known as AB 540, that permits the tuition breaks. Under the law, illegal immigrant students qualify for in-state rates if they attended a California high school for three years, graduated here and signed an affidavit saying they will apply for permanent residency as soon as they are eligible. The law has remained in effect during the legal challenge.

Another reason for separation of state and school.

The undocumented students also have long-standing ties to California and have worked hard to make a better life for themselves and their families, often overcoming substantial obstacles, said Nicholas Espiritu, staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, also involved in the case.

"They have earned the right to be there," Espiritu said.

No, they haven't.  Unless they were born here, their right to be here rests on whether or not they have come here and stayed here legally.  If they have served honorably in our armed forces, I say they should get permanent status here.  Otherwise, nope.

The Los Angeles Times doesn't even bother go along with the tactic of the Democrat legislators, who are trying to call tax hikes "fees" to skirt California law.  Jordan Rau and Evan Halper report.

The Democratic gambit, announced Wednesday, would raise $9.3 billion to ease the state's fiscal crisis by increasing sales taxes by three-fourths of a cent and gas taxes by 13 cents a gallon, starting in February. The plan would add a surcharge of 2.5% to everyone's 2009 state income tax bill.

Why the ruse?  Because the Republicans are acting like Republicans:

Though Republicans are a minority in both houses of the Legislature, they have repeatedly blocked tax increases and thwarted budgets they did not like, because California is one of only three states mandating a two-thirds vote for both budgets and tax increases. Achieving that threshold requires some Republican votes.

Tax watchdogs are furious.

Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., said the Democrats' bid violates tenets of Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that capped property taxes and required that all other tax increases be approved by two-thirds of the Legislature.

We already have too many taxes and tax rates that are too high.  Could this be another reason people are leaving California, as reported in this story by David Pierson?

For the fourth year in a row, more residents left the Golden State than moved here from other states, according to a report released Wednesday by the California Department of Finance.

But don’t worry!  We’ll still have plenty of people.

Though more births and rising international immigration helped boost California's population a modest 1.16% last year, the state continued its steady stream of domestic out-migration -- the movement to other states of people who live here.

Notice they don't distinguish between immigration and illegal alien influx.  We really don't know for sure how many illegal aliens come or stay here.  But we do now that American citizens are moving out.

In an article last month in the American magazine, urban historian Joel Kotkin contended that the loss of residents reflected a state in trouble. He blamed a Byzantine state government system, a failure to identify the housing crisis and a growing division between rich and poor.

It's really a shame.  With California’s natural and human resources, we could be more like a near-paradise.  Instead, we have dysfunctional government, gang-infested neighborhoods, infrastructure breakdown, and business-crippling restrictions.

Some illegal aliens from Mexico are going back to Mexico, and some people who are here legally don’t plan on staying here illegally.  It really isn't all that many, especially when you consider the millions who are here illegally.  Yet the Associated Press has a story by Ivan Moreno anyway.

Layoffs, dwindling job opportunities, anti-immigrant sentiment and the crackdown on illegal immigrants are forcing hard choices on many Mexican nationals in Colorado.

Is there really a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment out there?  I don't think so.  There are plenty of people who do not like illegal aliens filling our schools and hospitals and roads and jails using bogus documents.  Illegal aliens are not immigrants.  At least not in the legal defition.

Rico said what is known is that Mexicans are moving to other U.S. states - often places that historically have not seen a large population of Mexicans. They include North Carolina, Georgia, Idaho and Alaska, Rico said.

Whether for economic or anti-immigrant reasons, Rico said, "People are looking for alternatives within the United States."

They are going to follow the gravy.

Nationally, remittances to Mexico are down, as is Mexican emigration to the U.S.

Good.

August remittances totaled $1.9 billion, down 12 percent from August 2007, Mexico's Central Bank says. It's the first drop since the bank began tracking remittances in 1996.

And that’s not counting all of the money sent back by a longshot.

I don’t mind anyone coming to our country and staying, as long as they are here to be productive members of society.  I do not want people coming here and engaging in crime, including identity theft.  I don't want someone coming here and taking more – in the use of public infrastructure and services – than they are contributing via taxes.

We still need effective border control.


(Ooh, I must be insecure in my citizenship, since I am talking about illegal aliens.  At least, that’s according to the claims of some homosexuality advocates who don’t like what I write.)