GOVERNOR TARGETS IMMIGRANTS IN BUDGET REVISION
Proposes Elimination of CAPI & Deep Cuts to Emergency & Full-Scope Medi-Cal
Faced with a growing budget deficit, now estimated at $17.2 billion, Governor Schwarzenegger released his revised budget today. The proposal includes $11.7 billion in borrowing from previous bonds as well as from future earnings on the state's lottery system and $12.6 billion in cuts with a large portion, $627 million, coming from health and human services programs.

The Governor's proposal would eliminate entirely the Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), denyiing critical cash support to immigrant seniors and persons with disabilities who were rendered ineligible for federal SSI.

In the proposed cuts to the Medi-Cal program, the Governor would deny full scope coverage to lawful immigrants and impose harmful and extremely burdensome barriers to immigrants accessing emergency health services. Specifically, the Governor is proposing to require all immigrants enrolled in emergency Medi-Cal to reapply every single month in order to continue to receive the emergency services for which they are eligible. The proposal would also deny Medi-Cal benefits for lawful immigrants including green card holders during their first five years to restricted Medi-Cal, such as emergency services and a few services that are available to immigrants regardless of status.

The following is a summary of the Governor's proposed cuts to health and human services programs serving California's immigrant populations:

Elimination of the Cash Assistance for Program for Immigrants (CAPI)

The Governor proposes to eliminate the state funded Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI). Established in 1998 under Republican Governor Wilson, the program serves close to 10,000 low-income, lawful immigrant seniors and people with disabilities providing them with critical assistance to pay for housing, food and other basic necessities. CAPI ensures that elderly and disabled immigrants, who are here in the U.S. lawfully, do not go hungry or homeless. Eliminating the CAPI program is a short-sighted, inhumane and discriminatory proposal that will cause extreme hardship and despair among our state's most vulnerable residents, immigrant seniors and disabled. The CAPI program is a small investment in making sure that our seniors get the assistance they need. A proposal to cap enrollment in the CAPI program was rejected by the California legislature in 2004. This drastic proposal should be rejected as cruel and inhumane.

Medi-Cal: Increased Barriers to Enrollment and Denial of Benefits

The Governor also proposes to increase barriers for undocumented immigrants in need of emergency medical care by requiring them to come back and reapply every single month in order to continue to receive critical emergency services for which they are eligible. This wasteful, discriminatory proposal will require unnecessary paperwork, costing agencies valuable time and resources that could otherwise be spent on providing direct care to those in need.

Restricting immigrants' access to public health coverage inevitably harms citizen children. Over 40% of California children are U.S.-born citizens with one or more immigrant parents. Many also have immigrant siblings. When any member of a family is uninsured, it can adversely affect the entire household. Institute of Medicine researchers have found that when any member of a family is not insured, parents and children are less likely to get timely health services, use of health services is more likely to have an adverse affect on family finances, and children's health and long-term development can be compromised.

In a second equally harmful proposal, the Governor is proposing to deny access to full-scope Medi-Cal including preventive care to lawfully residing immigrants including green card holders during their first five years, providing them only with restricted Medi-Cal, such as emergency services and a few services that are available to immigrants regardless of status.

Restricting low-income immigrants' access to Med-Cal is inhumane, and will not result in significant cost savings. Providing comprehensive health coverage reduces the unnecessary use of high cost emergency room and other expensive services. People who are denied comprehensive health care do not stop using health care. Uninsured individuals are more likely to delay seeking treatment for potentially serious conditions, ultimately receiving care that is more costly and less effective. People who are uninsured are diagnosed at more advanced stages of disease, and are more likely to use emergency rooms as their regular source of care. California will continue to pay for these more expensive emergency services through the emergency Medi-Cal program. As a matter of federal law, low-income immigrants who would be eligible for Medi-Cal except for their immigration status receive Medi-Cal for emergency health care.

Other Immigrant Programs:

The Governor's budget proposal makes no changes to a previously proposed ten-percent cut in current year spending for the California Food Assistance Program (CFAP) and 4% cut to the Federal Food Stamp program (FSP). CFAP provides nutrition assistance to 23,000 low-income immigrants who have resided lawfully in the U.S. for less than five years and who were rendered ineligible for federal food stamps by the 1996 federal welfare law. The Governor's discriminatory proposal would reduce the monthly benefit level only for these families, from $91 to $82, effective June 1 of this year. At a time when food and gas prices are rising steadily and more and more Californians are applying for food stamps, this cut will have devastating affects on low-income communities. Also included is a ten-percent cut to the Naturalization Services Program (NSP) for the 2008-09 budget year bringing total NSP expenditures to $2.7 million. The administration expects the effect of this proposal to deprive 1,130 people of naturalization services.


For more information on the budget contact Cary Sanders at: (510) 663-8282 ext. 303 or go to: http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/Revised/BudgetSummary/FullBudgetSummary.pdf

Those receiving prenatal care only would not be harmed by this proposal.

Michael Fix, Wendy Zimmermann and Jeffrey S. Passel, Integration of Immigrant Families In the United States, Urban Institute, (July 2001).

Pourat, et al, Demographics, Health and Access to Care of Immigrant Children in California: Identifying Barriers to Staying Healthy, UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (March 2003).

Health Insurance is a Family Matter, Institute of Medicine (September 2002).

Institute of Medicine, Hidden Costs, Value Lost: Uninsurance in America, National Academies Press (2003).

Sicker and Poorer: Consequences of Being Uninsured, Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, (2002); No Health Insurance? It's enough to make you sick, American College of Physicians/American Society of Internal Medicine, (2000).