California Senate approves health care for undocumented immigrants

A proposal to expand health care to Californians in the country illegally cleared the Senate on Tuesday, passing on a 28-11 vote and heading to the Assembly.

Senate Bill 4 would allow undocumented immigrants to purchase health insurance on the state exchange, pending a federal waiver, and enroll eligible children under the age of 19 in Medi-Cal, the state’s insurance program for the poor. A capped number of undocumented adults would also be allowed participate, if additional funding is appropriated in the state budget.

“We are talking about our friends, we are talking about our neighbors and our families who are denied basic health care in the richest state of this union,” said Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, the measure’s author. “Ensuring that every child in California grows up healthy and with an opportunity to thrive and succeed is simply the right thing to do.”

Debate got increasingly feisty as it turned into a discussion of stalled immigration reform efforts in Congress. Sen. Isadore Hall, D-Los Angeles, baited his Republican colleagues to support SB 4, calling their “excuses” not to support the measure “tools of the weak and incompetent.”

Republican Sens. Andy Vidak of Hanford and Anthony Cannella of Ceres, who both represent swing agricultural districts, joined Democrats in voting yes on the bill.

The bill aims to expand the scope of the federal Affordable Care Act, which prohibited undocumented immigrants from participating in any of the health insurance exchanges it established. Under SB 4, California would also be required to apply for a federal waiver to allow individuals to buy plans on the exchange regardless of immigration status, though those who are not citizens would not be eligible for assistance to pay for the coverage.

Lara scaled back the bill last week to help it get past the Senate Appropriations Committee, where a similar proposal was held last year.

SB 4 still faces a challenging road in the Assembly, and should it make to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk, a signature is not guaranteed. Brown has expressed skepticism over the bill because of its high cost, estimated to be as much as $135 million annually.

Via: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article22904433.html#storylink=cpy

DMV prepares to issue driver's licenses to people who are here illegally

By PATRICK MCGREEVY
December 11, 2014

Just weeks before California begins to issue driver's licenses to people in the country illegally, the Department of Motor Vehicles has opened four new offices and hired more than 900 additional staffers to help handle the expected flood of applicants.

State officials expect that 1.4 million immigrants who are not lawfully in the country will apply for specially marked licenses during the first three years beginning Jan. 2. An extra $141 million has been budgeted to handle the applications.

"We've been getting ready for over a year," said DMV spokesman Armando Botello. "We are definitely ready."

The agency has opened new offices in Granada Hills; the Orange County city of Stanton; Lompoc, a town in Santa Barbara County; and San Jose.

Applicants can make appointments at any DMV office at https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv or by calling 800-777-0133. The four new offices also accommodate people without appointments.

The DMV is offering extended Saturday hours by appointment for all new license applicants at up to 60 field offices starting Jan. 3. A list of those offices will be made available on the agency's website.

Immigrants were allowed to make appointments for the new year starting Nov. 12. In the 21/2 weeks after that date, 378,891 people made appointments — more than twice the number during the same period last year, according to a DMV spokeswoman.

More than half of the new appointments were for people seeking their first driver's license from the state.

"People are really excited about it," said Rita Medina, a policy advocate for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

Noting that 71% of people who applied for a new driver authorization card in Nevada this year failed the written exam in the first three days of the program, the coalition is offering classes to help applicants pass the test in California, Medina said.

Applicants will have to complete a form and provide documents to verify their identities and show that they reside in California. They will also be required to provide a thumb print, pass vision and written tests and schedule a behind-the-wheel driving test.

The fee for a license is $33, and those who register a vehicle will have to show proof of insurance, which can be obtained through the California Low Cost Auto Insurance program under a state law passed this year.

The special licenses will look like other California licenses but have the words "federal limits apply" on the front and, "This card is not acceptable for official federal purposes," on the back. They cannot be used as identification to board an airplane, for example.

Immigrant-rights advocates fought to minimize the design differences for fear that landlords, merchants and others who may be presented with the cards might discriminate against those they can see are in the country illegally.

The law allowing the special licenses was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in October 2013. "No longer are undocumented people in the shadows," Brown said then.

Most Republicans in the Legislature had voted against the measure.

"We heard from Californians with a variety of concerns around this new law, including costs to taxpayers for the program that have been estimated in the millions just to get it started in January," Amanda Fulkerson, a spokeswoman for the Assembly Republican Caucus, said this week.

Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville), chairman of the California Legislative Latino Caucus and the measure's author, has argued from the beginning that it would make California roads safer by requiring immigrants who are already driving to pass written and road-skill tests.

"Our state is getting ready to offer these families a chance to get to work, a chance to bring their children to school and a chance at making it to the hospital during medical emergencies by allowing undocumented Californians to earn a driver's license," Alejo said this week.

In New Mexico, Gov. Susana Martinez has sought for years to repeal a 2003 law allowing driver's licenses to be issued to residents without regard to immigration status. She has maintained that immigrants from other states have poured into New Mexico to obtain licenses fraudulently.

California officials say they have safeguards in place here to prevent fraud, including the requirement that immigrants document their residency. In addition, the special licenses will have the same high-tech features that have protected regular licenses from counterfeit and altering since 2010.

Those include images visible only under ultraviolet light and special laser perforations.

More information on the license requirement and study materials is available on the DMV website.

via: http://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-pol-immigrant-licenses-20141211-story.html

California Stood Up For Immigrants, Transgender People In 2013

2013 was a big year for the rights of immigrants, workers, women and children in California. The most populous state in the nation, led by Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and a Democratic supermajority in the state Legislature, California this year passed groundbreaking laws that bucked the national trend of restricting abortion rights, rebuked the federal government's aggressive deportation program and led the country on workers' rights.

But 2014 is going to be even better -- that's when the laws start going into effect. Take a look at some of California's landmark laws from this past year below.

TRANSGENDER RIGHTS

In a nationwide first, transgender students in California will be able to choose which restrooms they want to use starting in January. They will also be able to choose between boys' and girls' sports teams.

California is the first state to enact these policies as a state law, but the groundbreaking legislation, which goes into effect Jan. 1, could be suspended within days if opposition groups gather enough signatures to test the law before voters on the November ballot.

PAPARAZZI REFORM

Paparazzi photographers who harass and intimidate celebrities and their children will face stiffer penalties under a new law passed in 2013: a fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in county jail. Victims can also sue for damages and attorney's fees, according to the Associated Press.

Before the bill passed, celebrity moms Halle Berry and Jennifer Garner joined forces to deliver some emotional testimony about how aggressive photographers regularly frighten their children.

"My 17-month-old baby is terrified and cries," said Garner during the August hearing. "My 4-year-old says, 'Why do these men never smile? Why do they never go away? Why are they always with us?'"

ABORTION RIGHTS

California's new law authorizes nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives and physician assistants to perform aspiration abortions during the first trimester.

California joins Oregon, Montana, Vermont and New Hampshire in allowing nurse practitioners to perform early abortions, the AP reported. In 2013, California was the only state to enact a law expanding abortion access, The New York Times noted.

Legislators also strengthened an existing law that makes it illegal to damage or block access to abortion clinics, the AP reported.

MINIMUM WAGE

California's minimum wage will go from $8 an hour to $9 in July, and it will reach $10 an hour by 2016. California joins 12 other states that are raising their minimum wage in 2014.

TEXTING LOOPHOLE CLOSED

A legislative loophole made it possible for teens to use voice commands like Apple iPhone's Siri to text while driving, and California's lawmakers closed that loophole this year. Adults will still be able to use the hands-free texting feature while driving.

Teens have been banned from using cell phones on the road since 2007, but an apparent loophole opened up in 2012 when legislators passed a bill allowing drivers to use hands-free devices to send text messages and perform other functions, according to the AP.

GUN SAFETY LAWS

California already has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, but lawmakers cracked down even further with laws that strengthen assault weapon permit requirements, require licensed psychotherapists to tell police about patients who threaten violence against others, and make it illegal to purchase gun parts that convert firearms into assault-style rifles.

The bills were written in reaction to mass shootings across the country, including the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn. In contrast, the federal government hasn't been able to pass any gun safety laws since the Newtown massacre.

DOMESTIC WORKERS BILL OF RIGHTS

California joined New York and Hawaii in creating statewide protections for domestic workers in 2013. California's law allows domestic workers like nannies and personal health care aides to claim overtime wages for more than nine hours of work a day or 45 hours of work a week.

The law is expected to affect about 100,000 workers, but it's only temporary --legislators will have to vote on whether to renew the law in 2017, KPCC reported. It's also a pared-down version of the bill that was originally proposed in 2011, which included meal and rest breaks.

IMMIGRATION REFORM

The federal government is stalling on immigration reform, and Gov. Jerry Brown made it clear that California isn't going to wait around any longer. Brown signed into law a group of bills this year to protect undocumented immigrants, the most significant of which is the Trust Act.

The Trust Act limits local police's cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security's Secure Communities, a federal deportation program that asks police departments to screen arrestees for immigration status and hold them for the feds if they're found to be undocumented. So far, Secure Communities has deported 100,000 Californians, most of whom did not have a serious criminal record, the Los Angeles Times reported, but the new law will require people to be charged with or convicted of a serious offense before being held for possible deportation by the feds.

Starting in 2015, California's undocumented immigrants will also be able to apply for driver's licenses. California joins Illinois, Colorado, Nevada, Maryland, Connecticut, Oregon, and the District of Columbia in passing the driver's license legislation in 2013, MSNBC reported. New Mexico, Washington and Utah also allow undocumented immigrants to apply for driver's licenses.

via: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/31/new-california-laws-2014_n_4521694.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics

California is Richest, Poorest State

It’s fair to say that California is the richest state in the nation. We have more millionaires than any other state, and mansions dot our coastal bluffs and inland canyons.

But California is also, arguably, the poorest state in the nation. We have more people in poverty — 6.1 million — and more children in poverty than any other state.

Even more ominously, a new measure of poverty shows that California has the highest percentage of its population living below the poverty line.

By the traditional measure, California’s poverty rate is 16.6 percent, 20th in the nation. But the new, supplemental measure released last year by the Census Bureau puts California at the top of the list with a poverty rate of 23.5 percent.

Unlike the official measure, the supplemental poverty measure reflects the cost of living – including housing – in a state and also reflects transfer payments such as food and housing subsidies and tax credits.

By either measure, though, it is clear that California has a lot of poor people, far more than its glittering image would suggest.

Part of this is a reflection of our diversity, and the character of our recent population growth. We are a state of immigrants, and the wave of immigration from Latin America that peaked in the 1990s brought millions of desperately poor people to California.

These immigrants were not just penniless, but many also had little formal education. They had very little capacity to work in any job outside of agriculture and menial labor. They were, largely, stuck at the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Their lives here might have been better than the conditions they left behind, but still they formed a large and stubborn bubble in the state’s poverty numbers.

Immigration also helps explain the regional differences in poverty in California. Immigrants tended to concentrate in counties where agriculture was big and the cost of living was low. A look at the poverty numbers by county shows the contrast.

The counties with the lowest poverty rates (using the traditional measure) are generally those near the coast, places like Marin, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Some foothill counties are also on this list: Placer and El Dorado near Lake Tahoe, and Calaveras County in the Gold Country.

On the other extreme are, for the most part, counties in the Central Valley and other agricultural regions. In Merced County, more than one-quarter of the households have incomes below the poverty line. The situation is similar in Fresno, Kern, Tulare and Imperial counties. In fact, three of the five most impoverished metropolitan areas in the nation are in the Central Valley.

The numbers also show the connection between poverty and family structure. Families headed by a single parent are much more likely to be living in poverty. In the ten counties with the lowest poverty rates, 25 percent of families have a single parent. But in the ten counties with the highest poverty rates, 36 percent of the families are headed by one parent. And in those counties, more than half the families with a single mother are living in poverty.

Education is also correlated with poverty. The counties with the lowest high school drop out rates, like Placer, Calaveras, Marin and El Dorado, also tend to have the lowest poverty rates. And the same is true in reverse: some of the poorest counties, like Kings, San Joaquin, Yuba and Fresno, also have some of the highest rates of high school drop outs. It’s not clear whether failing to complete high school causes poverty or is caused by it, or both, but the two are definitely related.

The good news for California is that second-generation immigrants tend to be better educated than their parents, speak English better, and are less likely to be living in poverty. By the third generation, the gap between the grandchildren of immigrants and other Californians becomes shrinks even further. So with immigration having peaked in the early 1990s, time will slowly make at least a dent in these numbers.

But California still has a long way to go. As the economy improves and the wealthy and middle-income people see their situations improve, the state needs to be careful not to sustain a forgotten underclass.

Especially in the Central Valley, but in pockets of poverty throughout the state, we need a concerted, focused effort to change the things that are correlated with poverty — from high school drop-outs to single parenthood.

That won’t eliminate poverty. But if every child born here at least has an equal chance to join the economic mainstream, that would be a big start.

via Fox & Hounds: Keeping Tabs on California Business & Politics http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2013/05/california-is-richest-poorest-state/