Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he has a novel way of cutting California’s budget: Ship all the state’s inmates who are illegal immigrants to prisons in Mexico.
But is he really serious? A spokesman says that wasn’t a formal proposal, just an idea of “a creative solution” Schwarzenegger thinks is needed to help curb state spending.
Schwarzenegger was asked by a reporter at a Sacramento Press Club appearance Monday for some examples of reckless state spending he would like to curtail. The Governator’s snap response: send the 20,000 illegal immigrants currently behind bars in state prisons south of the border, for a savings of an estimated $1 billion.
“Think about it,” Schwarzenegger said. “California give Mexico the money… We pay them to build a prison down in Mexico and then we have those undocumented immigrants be down there in a prison and with their prison guards and all this. It will halve the costs to build the prisons and halve the costs to run the prisons. That is money — again, a billion dollars right there — that can go into higher education.”