As a part of the plan to fix the $42 billion budget deficit, the California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is urging the legislature to back his proposed cuts to the three largest areas of the state’s budget - prisons, education, and health care. Much attention was paid to the Governor’s plan to save money by deporting undocumented immigrants. The governor has proposed the release of thousands of immigrant prisoners to Federal custody. They would be handed over to the Immigrations and Customs Enforcements Agency (ICE) on a case-by-case review. According to the California Department of Corrections, the goal is to commute the sentences of those already eligible for deportation, which is a potential solution to the problem of overcrowding of the prisons.

The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act require all non-citizen felons to be deported. A non-citizen with an aggravated felony conviction is ineligible for most forms of relief from deportation. With the 1996 act, Congress expanded the number of crimes that made people subject to removal and allowed non-citizens to be detained without bond on the basis of criminal conviction. The law is retroactive, meaning crimes committed before 1996 are included. The highlights of this bill are not only that non-citizens are deported for ‘aggravated felonies,’ but also for minor offenses like violation of a restraining order or a drunk-driving offense.

Cost to keep non-citizen felons in prison
According to the Governor, spending on prisons has nearly doubled in the past five years, but he suggested cuts of only 6.5 percent. The prisons are costing the taxpayers millions of dollars per day. The Legislative Analyst’s Office said this year the cost to house immigrant prisoners added up to $1.2 billion dollars. Lawmakers are debating on changing tough-on-crime policies that have sent prison populations and costs soaring.

Delaying this decision on prison cuts is increasing California’s financial crunch everyday by $3.3 billion dollars. A court order gave the state 45 days to devise a two-year plan for reducing its prison population to 137.5 percent of its designed capacity of roughly 80,000.  Present population figures provided by the department of corrections are nearly twice that. As California faced a federal court order to reduce its overcrowded inmate population by 40,000 within two years, Governor Schwarzenegger began work on the goal to meet the $1.2 billion budget cut and reduce the inmate population. He is expected to turn over thousands of non-citizen felons to federal authorities for deportation.

Where do they come from?
Of all states in the nation, California has seen a steady increase in the number of immigrants for decades. In the 1950s, half of California's immigrants came from either Canada or Europe and the majority of the remainder came from Mexico. By 1990, the number of European and Canadian immigrants had fallen dramatically, to less than 10 percent, and the number of immigrants from Mexico and Central America had climbed to well over half of the total. Additionally, California's share of Asian immigrants doubled.

These groups are mostly less educated, are younger, and have more children than immigrants elsewhere. They also are more likely to be refugees and undocumented. The demographic characteristics of the foreign born in California is more likely to be related to criminal activity and incarcerations than in any other state in the nation, providing some basis for concern that these immigrants may be more criminally active than other groups in California. For all these reasons, immigration is affecting California more substantially than any other state in the nation. The 19,000 prisoners who are undocumented felons make up about 11 percent of the total prison population, and include 15,000 Mexican citizens.
 
Process of deportation
All non-citizens, even if residing in U.S legally, is subject to deportation if convicted of an aggravated felony unless he or she is a naturalized citizen.

Non-citizens are subject to deportation regardless of:

• their immigration status
• how long they have lived in the US or had any legal immigration status
• the existence of immediate family members who are US citizens
• the strength of their ties to the community.

The penalty for non-citizens convicted of aggravated felony is the sentence plus any additional time waiting for deportation procedures to be completed plus the final penalty of deportation.

What is next?
Under state law, the governor has the authority to deport undocumented immigrants with first-time felony convictions without requiring legislative approval.  The governor’s proposition to fix the budget deficit by cutting down prison expenses, and deporting non-citizen felons coupled with the judges’ demands to reduce overcrowding of prisons raise concerns for many immigration and civil rights advocates. However the fact remains clear that California's prisons are overcrowded with a large number of inmates who do not belong in the country in the first place.  Why should the tax payers of California subsidize this?  Why not the native governments of these felons?  No country anywhere in the world should be burdened with managing illegal immigrant felons who do not contribute to the system in any way!