There is no definitive estimate as to the number of illegal aliens who live in California. The conservative estimate is three million souls. It is very likely to be much higher. With heavy rains this year across most of the state, the near collapse of the Oroville Dam highlighted the urgent need for infrastructure funding.

Yet, the state’s legislature is focused on battling Donald Trump over sanctuary cities. In fact, in retaliation for the threat against its sanctuary counties and cities, the California legislature is advancing Senate Bill 54 on a fast-track to passage. The idea is to make California the first ever sanctuary state. If that sounds incredible, it is only the tip of the iceberg.

Organizations such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform estimate the cost to California’s taxpayers each year as it relates to social services for these individuals and their children to be a whopping $25 billion dollars.

According to a study released by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) it finds that providing education, health care, law enforcement, and social and government services to illegal aliens and their dependents costs Californians $25.3 billion per year. Outlined in FAIR’s report The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on California Taxpayers the state’s “3 million illegal aliens and their 1.1 million U.S.–born children cost the average California household — headed by a U.S. citizen – $2,370 annually.”

The report finds that taxes collected from illegal aliens amounts to about $3.5 billion annually. Some economists estimate that illegal aliens add $10 billion to California’s economy in productive labor.

Even if that were the case, it leaves the state with a total net loss of over $12 billion dollars a year. Dan Stein, the president of FAIR, has stated “Despite overwhelming evidence that illegal immigration represents an unsustainable fiscal burden to the state, the California

Legislature and local governments across the state continue to provide new benefits, new services, and new privileges to illegal aliens, even as the state neglects the needs and concerns of other Californians. The costs will continue to grow so long as the state continues to reward illegal immigration and impedes immigration enforcement.”

The World Bank estimates that illegal aliens send an incredible $120 billion dollars a year back to their home countries. The Daily Mail cites the bank as contending that “In the United States last year, more than $120 billion was sent by workers to families abroad – making it the largest sender of remittances in the world.

More than $23 billion went to Mexico, $13.45 billion to China, $10.84 billion to India and $10 billion to the Philippines, among other recipients.” These are no small sums, and getting on the California gravy train has now become normalized and mainstream.

With the audacity of the someone who feels that they are above reproach, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León admitted publicly that he forged documents when he himself was illegally in the United States.

De León casually described in a radio interview with KPCC 89.3’s Air Talk with Larry Mantle his feelings on the matter. When asked about what he meant the politician replied:

“… I can tell you half of my family would be eligible for deportation under [President Donald Trump’s] executive order, because if they got a false Social Security card, if they got a false identification, if they got a false driver’s license prior to us passing AB60, if they got a false green card, and anyone who has family members, you know, who are undocumented knows that almost entirely everybody has secured some sort of false identification. That’s what you need to survive, to work. They are eligible for massive deportation.”

This kind of caviler attitude is now the norm in California where Governor Jerry Brown, who works closely with Mr. de León, has chosen to afford illegal aliens with all the social amenities of those who are citizens of the state, along with other perks such as driver´s licenses and college scholarships.

Released on Monday, Campus Reform, a university watchdog group, announced “California Governor Jerry Brown is proposing cuts to higher education scholarships for middle-class students while increasing scholarship funding for illegal immigrant students. Brown projects that the cut will save $115 million per year by 2021, but the Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the cost of financial aid for DREAMers will grow from $67 million last year to $88.6 million this year.”

With this proposal, it is hard not to argue that residents of California are being discriminated against by the governor in favor of illegal alien students. California schools, especially those of the universities, were started as a way of creating affordable education options that moved away from private colleges so that almost any resident who could achieve it, would receive a quality education.

How times have changed! As the cost of college tuitions continue to rise, the already overburdened middle-class of California are now going to be stripped of funds to assist them financially so that illegal aliens can receive their cut. This, of course, is a double blow considering that those same middle-class families contribute in taxes to the state coffers year-over-year.

This kind of reckless behavior on the part of California’s leadership is not en vogue with the voters. Most California residents are against “sanctuary cities.”

Upwards of 74% of California’s oppose support for these cities yet people like Brown, de León, and others continue to push the narrative that it is only just and fair to allow illegal aliens to be protected, even if that means undermining native members of the populace who were born there. Nationally, the numbers are roughly the same.

A survey from Harvard–Harris Poll found that 80 percent of voters say local authorities should have to comply with the law by reporting to federal agents any criminal activities committed by illegal immigrants. Such views are disproportionately in line with Donald Trump’s tactic of deporting criminal illegal aliens via the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Data compiled from the FBI and Government Accountability Office suggests that illegal aliens commit murder at rates starkly different to native born citizens. Criminal and illegal aliens commit murder at much higher rates than all inhabitants of the U.S. – at least 3 to 10 times higher. Given numbers like these it leaves one to wonder, if the will of the general populace is to end sanctuary cities, why is Governor Brown open to making the entirety of California the first “sanctuary state?”

The National Bureau of Economic Research estimates nearly 20% of all agricultural labor in the United States is performed by illegal aliens while 13% of construction jobs are filled by illegal aliens as well. Americans are constantly told that people who are US citizens will not do these jobs. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen. One thing is certain, if illegal aliens are able to continue apace, we will never know the outcome. What we do know is that taxpayers are subsidizing cheap immigrant labor to the tune of $25 billion a year. Is that worth the price?