A welfare officer in Glendale, California was asked who qualifies for the state's Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants — CAPI. His answer was refreshingly direct: "If [you are] a citizen, you cannot get CAPI."

That's the program. It's in the name.

A report from City-Journal lays out the full tab. California spent an estimated $11 billion in its last fiscal year subsidizing illegal aliens — housing, food, phones, tuition, healthcare, and car insurance. Not the Bee's Harris Rigby flagged the breakdown this week, and the itemized list reads less like a government budget and more like an all-inclusive resort package.

Start with healthcare. The state expanded Medi-Cal eligibility to illegal immigrants regardless of status, and 1.7 million people enrolled. The estimated annual cost of that single expansion: $10 billion. That's not a rounding error buried inside some omnibus spending bill. That's one line item consuming more than some states' entire budgets.

Then there's California LifeLine — the state's free phone and cell service program. In 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation removing the Social Security number requirement for applicants. The program now explicitly allows qualification "regardless of immigration status." Free phones for people the federal government says aren't supposed to be here, funded by the people who are.

Stack it up: Medi-Cal. CAPI cash assistance. California LifeLine phones. The Low Cost Auto Insurance Program. Tuition assistance. Housing subsidies. Each one individually defensible in a press conference. Together, they form a parallel benefits system that American citizens in the same state cannot access.

One-quarter of California's population is foreign-born. That's not a talking point — it's the demographic math driving a budget crisis the state legislature pretends doesn't exist. California is running massive deficits. Cities across Southern California can't house their own residents. Los Angeles has tens of thousands of people sleeping on sidewalks within driving distance of offices administering these programs.

The standard defense is that these programs promote public health and reduce long-term costs. That argument requires you to ignore the $11 billion number sitting right there on the page. It also requires you to believe that a state hemorrhaging money and residents — California lost a congressional seat after the 2020 census — is making a sound fiscal investment by expanding eligibility for benefits to people who entered the country illegally.

Every dollar in that $10 billion annual Medi-Cal expansion is a dollar that doesn't go to a veteran in Bakersfield, a senior in Sacramento, or a homeless American in Los Angeles. That's not an editorial opinion. That's how budgets work. The money goes somewhere, and the people who live on the sidewalks outside the welfare office in Glendale can't get CAPI.

Because they're citizens.