Joe Cunningham: “I support the proposition that we not separate illegal immigration from legal immigration in this bill, but I think when…”

“I support the proposition that we not separate illegal immigration from legal immigration in this bill, but I think when we speak about them that it is very important to differentiate between the two. I would like to speak primarily to the education problems that we have in the State of California, and Members can also relate them to their States, especially the border States. In California, we have over 800,000 illegals, kindergarten through 12th grade. Let us just take half of that. Take 400,000, half, so that the numbers cannot be disputed. It takes about $5,000 to educate a child per year. Take that times 400,000. That is $2 billion per year. Take a 10-year period, we are talking about $20 billion out of the coffers of Sacramento for our school systems. Take the school meals program, 185 percent below poverty level times 400,000, at $1.90 a meal, that is $1.2 million a day for illegals in the California school system. That is just two meals. That is not three that they quality for. The increased burden on the school systems of separate bilingual education and social services for the poor is billions of dollars out of Governor Wilson's budget. We have between 16 and 18,000 illegals in our California Federal prison system, in the California State prison system. It costs about $25,000 each to house them. We talk about sometimes building more prisons than we do schools.”