Wanna get rich? Be a cop in California
SAN DIEGO -- Is it too much to ask that those who are sworn to enforce the laws actually follow them? After all, when laws are broken, other people pay the price.
You may have heard that California is running out of money.
This is true.
You may have also heard that the Golden State is home to an estimated 2.5 million illegal immigrants, and that this is what is driving California into bankruptcy.
This is false.
At least that's what I heard more than a decade ago from former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
At the time, Nativist talk-radio hosts were spewing baseless claims that the state's financial insolvency was all due to costs incurred due to illegal immigration.
"That is not so," Schwarzenegger told me and the other members of the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2008.
Back then, and still to this day, the real culprit is something that is perfectly legal: public employee unions.
I recently tried explaining these facts of life to a group of farmers -- most of whom, I will say, seemed to understand the point quite well. After I'd spoken on the immigration debate for about 45 minutes, a man suggested the real difference between past and present waves of immigrants was the advent of the welfare state, and the cost that is now incurred by government to deal with illegal immigration.
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