Veto-proof GOP majority forces Democrat governor to sign bill denying benefits to illegals

Warner signs measure denying public benefits to illegal aliens - The Washington Times: Metropolitan - March 30, 2005:
"There is no official local or state estimate of how many taxpayer dollars would be saved, since the agencies do not track how many illegals currently receive such benefits.
"Virginia spends about $2 billion on Medicaid and an estimated $60.5 million on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program annually.
"Lawmakers and immigration experts have said there are an estimated 200,000 illegal aliens in Virginia, which has an estimated population of 7.4 million."

This story also points out that the state bureaucracy says it will cost $12 million per year to hire staff to check eligibility.

So, will it save money? The official estimate above is that illegals are a bit under 3% of the state's population. Three percent of the $2 billion Medicaid budget is $60 million. So, even if only one in four or five of indigent illegals are on the rolls, there will be a net saving for the state. My guess is the savings will be in the low eight figures. Not a lot, but still nothing to sneeze at. Now, if the illegals identified and denied benefits could be reported to INS and deported, we'd really be making progress.

This brings us again to the problem I have mentioned before that the failure of the federal government to spend money on border enforcement becomes an unfunded mandate for state and local government spending. If those 200,000 people had never gotten to VA in the first place, the state and its localities would have been saved many millions of dollars annually - $5 to $10 per capita per annum as a low range estimate.

Now suppose the feds spent an additional $5 per capita per annum on border control and enforcement - that would be over a billion dollars - that should be more than 10,000 new agents (assuming it costs $100,000 to put an agent in the field for a year). Ten dollars p.c. p.a. would put 20,000 more agents on the border.

It seems to me highly likely that really tight border control would save money in the aggregate. The trouble is the Congress-critters would have to spend the money which would spread jobs and money mostly over just four states and the savings would accrue to state and local governments over the whole country.