California Democrats have spent decades putting the interests of illegal immigrants ahead of United States citizens, making California a magnet for illegal immigration while pushing native residents out. Now that they acknowledge that illegal immigration is driving the state’s population growth, Democrats are not reconsidering the policies that created the problem. They are trying to entrench them.
Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, Democrats claimed that illegal immigrants did not receive free healthcare from taxpayers. That was false. Six states, including California, were using state and federal tax dollars to provide free healthcare to illegal immigrants in 2024, and Gov. Tim Walz’s Minnesota began providing free healthcare to illegal immigrants in 2025.
Recommended Stories
As with every other Democrat spending proposal, the cost of free healthcare for illegal immigrants ended up being far higher than originally predicted. California has spent tax dollars on free healthcare for illegal immigrant children since 2016, but in 2024 expanded the benefit to all illegal immigrants up to age 49. Democrats estimated this expansion would cost $3 billion a year, but far more illegal immigrants signed up for the free healthcare than Democrats forecast, and the cost of the program quickly ballooned to more than $10 billion.
Faced with a multibillion-dollar budget deficit, Gov. Gavin Newsom halted new enrollments for illegal immigrants over the age of 19 in 2026, added a $30 premium for enrollees, and slashed reimbursements to providers. These cuts held spending on the program at current levels but came nowhere close to reducing spending to the original estimates.
Asked during last week’s gubernatorial debate whether they would restore funding for illegal immigrant healthcare cut by Newsom, every Democrat that answered the question said yes. Asked how they planned to pay for the increased spending, none had any good answers other than failed ideas of the past, such as moving the entire state, including legal residents, to a single-payer system — that is, socialized healthcare.
Pressed separately on whether she would direct state law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration officials, former Rep. Katie Porter promised to preserve the state’s sanctuary status. “It’s the job of the California governor to protect every single Californian,” Porter said, even though illegal immigrants are not, of course, Californians. She then added, “The sanctuary state policy is designed to make sure that our state resources, the taxpayer dollars, the public servants that we have, are focusing on doing their jobs, which is not cooperating with the federal immigration authorities.”
“These are Californians,” Porter explained, again referring falsely to illegal immigrants. “They contribute to our economy. They pay taxes, and they’re one of the only ways that our state has been growing in recent years.”
Porter is right that California has made itself dependent on Illegal immigration, for it is “one of the only ways” the state has grown in recent years. Thanks to the highest gas, electricity, and housing costs in the continental U.S., employers and families have stampeded out of California to friendlier business climates in non-sanctuary states such as Florida, South Carolina, and Texas. Each of these problems — gas, electricity, and housing prices — is made worse by California’s sanctuary status. Just witness the fall in rents in the very neighborhoods the Trump administration targeted for deportations.
Illegal immigration is also a reason California has one of the worst public education systems. As any teacher will tell you, all students suffer when significant portions of a class do not come from English-speaking households. Because of illegal immigration, almost 40% of California public school students speak a language other than English at home.
California also has one of the lowest marriage rates, which means that even if tens of thousands of families were not leaving for more affordable and better-run states, California would soon not be producing enough births to outnumber deaths. The only reason California’s population is not collapsing is immigration, much of it illegal. A state has come to a terrible pass when it relies on lawbreaking, and its ruling politicians promise more of it.
BECERRA’S BIG LIE ON CHILD LABOR
A California voter might hope that Democrats such as Porter would pause and reflect on the fact that the state has become dependent on illegal immigration for growth after instituting policies that protect illegal aliens over native citizens. Unfortunately, as last week’s debate showed, no such reflection is coming. Not only are California Democrats committed to allowing illegal immigrants to stay, but they are also determined to give them fresh reasons to live in the state — free healthcare, no matter the cost to native taxpayers.
California Democrats are not reversing the decline but subsidizing it. A state that drives out citizens, imports dependency, and calls the result growth has abandoned basic governance. Until Democrats put legal residents first, California will keep losing the families it needs while forcing those who remain to pay for the policies driving them away.
