Juliana Barbassa /AP: it's "drastic" to cut non-emergency health care to illegal aliens

Juliana Barbassa of the Associated Press offers "Budget crunch cuts illegal immigrants' health care" (link), a discussion of localities reducing or eliminating non-emergency healthcare to illegal aliens. On the one hand, supporters of illegal immigration are quick to tell us that illegal aliens don't get welfare benefits; on the other hand, when those benefits (broadly construed) are cut, they bring on hacks like Julliana Barbasa to advocate against such cuts.

And, while she's able to get quotes from supporters of illegal immigration, apparently her phone didn't work when it came time to get a quote from someone who'd point out the only workable public policy: encouraging illegal aliens to return home and encouraging their own countries to take care of them.

Bowing to recession-related budget pressures, Sacramento County recently took the drastic step of cutting non-emergency health services for illegal immigrants. Contra Costa County, on the east side of San Francisco Bay, will vote on a similar measure Tuesday... ...the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that about 59 percent of the 11.9 million illegal immigrants living in the United States have no health insurance, making up about 15 percent of the nation's approximately 47 million uninsured... ...Contra Costa County officials are doing the same hard math: if they vote to cut services to the 5,500 illegal immigrants they serve a year, they will save about $6 million...

The main quote source is Robert Pestronk, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO); he may have been the one who tipped off the article. At the end, the article quotes two others in support of giving benefits to illegal aliens: Sonal Ambegaokar of the National Immigration Law Center and Julia Harumi Mass of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

Rather than ending with a quote from someone who supports our laws and the correct public policy, Juliana Barbossa closes on a PIIPP-style note featuring the illegal alien who the author is using as a shield for her promotion of bad public policy.

Sun, 03/15/2009 - 12:46 · · Importance: 4