What percent of illegal immigrant children don't have health insurance?

Question

If you know the percent who don't have health care in California that would be even better. California is proposing an initiative that would raise cigarette taxes to $3.47/pack in part to pay for health, dental and vision benefits for illegal immigrant children.

Chloe, no I didn't say that a pack of cigs is going to be $3.47, I said that the TAX ALONE is going to be $3.47. That will make it about $7 a pack in all, on average.

And also Chloe, no I didn't make this up ... you can google it, it's all over the net. Here's what the nonpartisan legislative analysts office said: (this information is in your state supplied voter guide if you live in California): "Almost one-half of these funds would be allocated to expand the HFP (Healthy Families Program) to provide health coverage to include (1) children from families with income between 250 percent and 300 percent of the FPL and (2) CHILDREN FROM FAMILIES WITH INCOMES UP TO 300 PERCENT OF THE FPL WHO ARE UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS OR LEGAL IMMIGRANTS NOT NOW ELLIGIBLE FOR HFP.

Answer 1

The current figure is 7.5% of all immigrants.

I'm all for the tax increase. You, like everyone else, got bombarded with information at a young age about how smoking is bad. But you wanted to be cool, so you did anyway. You should have listened to your parents and school. I'd rather have you paying for this healthcare than me. Yes!!!

Answer 2

I would say 99.9% of them in CA do not have health insurance. How would they get it if their parents are illegal? They may be covered by medi-cal. I haven't read that initiative well yet, but I do know that what the commercials say is often very misleading. By the way, a pack of cigs is at least 3.47 if not more. I don't believe what you are saying is true on the surface so I will research it a bit more before voting. Personally, I don't feel the need to fund illegal health care at all. Too many legals do not have health care and can't get it.

Hey Dude, I didn't say you were making this up. I just said I haven't read the little pamplet yet. They are currently not using the last cig taxes for what they said they would so I have no faith in this one either. (I didn't understand about the 3.47 being a tax - thanks for explaining.)

Answer 3

I'm afraid to say that almost all 'flaming liberals' are for healthcare for the illegals. Face it, the illegal immigrants for the most part are hard working (too often better at their jobs and more willing to work hard than Americans on the same job) family's that if given the chance would love to earn citizenship. Secondly, we could never deport them. So what must be done is get their tax, FICA, medicare money by giving worker permits and collecting. Heavy crackdowns on employers that get caught employing one without worker permits or that doesn't collect the appropriate taxes. Finally, deport those with felonies and not renew the worker permits of those with excessive misdemeaner charges ie. 3 in three years or so. The problem can be dealt with but only if someone has the guts to do it. McCain tried to but gave too much in the bi-partisan agreement, but at least he tried. Give Obama the leash and we will be much more bankrupt as a country than we are now.

Answer 4

Great. Our US children have an incredibly high rate of being uninsured.

Let's insure illegal children first!

Because it's the NICE thing to do...

Answer 5

try asking how many legal born and raised here have medical insurance, we know how many illegals have it. if you dont then i will tell you. every damn one of them.

Answer 6

we are sick of israel's lies. perhaps because so many were raised in kibbutzes, an abominable child-rearing method that leads to sociopathy, their citizens are unable to think straight.

sealing off a place, arresting its government, and allowing in no food - genocide.
A whole society is being destroyed

There are 1.5 million Palestinians imprisoned

in the most heavily populated area in the world

The Israeli army has been rampaging through Gaza,

killing and demolishing,

bombing and shelling, indiscriminately"
Gaza is dying. The Israeli siege of the Palestinian enclave is so tight that its people are on the edge of starvation.

Here on the shores of the Mediterranean a great tragedy is taking place that is being ignored because the world's attention has been diverted by wars in Lebanon and Iraq.

A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world.

Israel has stopped all trade. It has even forbidden fishermen to go far from the shore so they wade into the surf to try vainly to catch fish with hand-thrown nets.

Many people are being killed by Israeli incursions that occur every day by land and air.

A total of 262 people have been killed and 1,200 wounded, of whom 60 had arms or legs amputated, since 25 June, says Dr Juma al-Saqa, the director of the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City which is fast running out of medicine.

Of these, 64 were children and 26 women. This bloody conflict in Gaza has so far received only a fraction of the attention given by the international media to the war in Lebanon.

It was on 25 June that the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was taken captive and two other soldiers were killed by Palestinian militants who used a tunnel to get out of the Gaza Strip.

In the aftermath of this, writes Gideon Levy in the daily Haaretz, the Israeli army "has been rampaging through Gaza - there's no other word to describe it - killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately".

Gaza has essentially been reoccupied since Israeli troops and tanks come and go at will. In the northern district of Shajhayeh they took over several houses last week and stayed five days.

By the time they withdrew, 22 Palestinians had been killed, three houses were destroyed and groves of olive, citrus and almond trees had been bulldozed.

Fuad al-Tuba, the 61-year-old farmer who owned a farm here, said: "They even destroyed 22 of my bee-hives and killed four sheep."

He pointed sadly to a field, its brown sandy earth churned up by tracks of bulldozers, where the stumps of trees and broken branches with wilting leaves lay in heaps.

Near by a yellow car was standing on its nose in the middle of a heap of concrete blocks that had once been a small house.

His son Baher al-Tuba described how for five days Israeli soldiers confined him and his relatives to one room in his house where they survived by drinking water from a fish pond. "Snipers took up positions in the windows and shot at anybody who came near," he said.

"They killed one of my neighbours called Fathi Abu Gumbuz who was 56 years old and just went out to get water."

Sometimes the Israeli army gives a warning before a house is destroyed. The sound that Palestinians most dread is an unknown voice on their cell phone saying they have half an hour to leave their home before it is hit by bombs or missiles. There is no appeal.

But it is not the Israeli incursions alone that are destroying Gaza and its people.

In the understated prose of a World Bank report published last month, the West Bank and Gaza face "a year of unprecedented economic recession.

Real incomes may contract by at least a third in 2006 and poverty to affect close to two thirds of the population." Poverty in this case means a per capita income of under $2 (£1.06) a day.

There are signs of desperation everywhere. Crime is increasing. People do anything to feed their families.

Israeli troops entered the Gaza industrial zone to search for tunnels and kicked out the Palestinian police.

When the Israelis withdrew they were replaced not by the police but by looters. On one day this week there were three donkey carts removing twisted scrap metal from the remains of factories that once employed thousands.

"It is the worst year for us since 1948 [when Palestinian refugees first poured into Gaza]," says Dr Maged Abu-Ramadan, a former ophthalmologist who is mayor of Gaza City.

"Gaza is a jail. Neither people nor goods are allowed to leave it. People are already starving. They try to live on bread and falafel and a few tomatoes and cucumbers they grow themselves."

The few ways that Gazans had of making money have disappeared. Dr Abu-Ramadan says the Israelis "have destroyed 70 per cent of our orange groves in order to create security zones."

Carnations and strawberries, two of Gaza's main exports, were thrown away or left to rot. An Israeli air strike destroyed the electric power station so 55 per cent of power was lost. Electricity supply is now becoming almost as intermittent as in Baghdad.

The Israeli assault over the past two months struck a society already hit by the withdrawal of EU subsidies after the election of Hamas as the Palestinian government in March.

Israel is withholding taxes owed on goods entering Gaza. Under US pressure, Arab banks abroad will not transfer funds to the government.

Two thirds of people are unemployed and the remaining third who mostly work for the state are not being paid. Gaza is now by far the poorest region on the Mediterranean. Per capita annual income is $700, compared with $20,000 in Israel.

Conditions are much worse than in Lebanon where Hizbollah liberally compensates war victims for loss of their houses.

If Gaza did not have enough troubles this week there were protest strikes and marches by unpaid soldiers, police and security men.

These were organised by Fatah, the movement of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, which lost the election to Hamas in January. His supporters marched through the streets waving their Kalashnikovs in the air.

"Abu Mazen you are brave," they shouted. "Save us from this disaster." Sour-looking Hamas gunmen kept a low profile during the demonstration but the two sides are not far from fighting it out in the streets.

The Israeli siege and the European boycott are a collective punishment of everybody in Gaza. The gunmen are unlikely to be deterred.

In a bed in Shifa Hospital was a sturdy young man called Ala Hejairi with wounds to his neck, legs, chest and stomach.

"I was laying an anti-tank mine last week in Shajhayeh when I was hit by fire from an Israeli drone," he said. "I will return to the resistance when I am better. Why should I worry? If I die I will die a martyr and go to paradise."

His father, Adel, said he was proud of what his son had done adding that three of his nephews were already martyrs.

He supported the Hamas government: "Arab and Western countries want to destroy this government because it is the government of the resistance."

Patrick Cockburn/Independent

Source(s):

http://www.radicalleft.net/blog/_archive...