Birth Tourism Is Now Legal and You’re Picking Up the Tab

In June, the Supreme Court decided Trump v. Barbara and settled the birthright citizenship question for a generation. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority that children born on American soil to parents here unlawfully are “citizens at birth” under the 14th Amendment. Sacramento didn’t pause to consider whether this was sound policy. The welcome mat was already out.

Birth tourism, the practice of crossing into the United States while pregnant, delivering a baby on American soil, and securing automatic citizenship for that child, now has a Supreme Court seal of approval. Not through any act of Congress. Not through any democratic vote. Through a judicial reading of a constitutional clause ratified in 1868 to protect formerly enslaved Americans, not to create a global birth certificate lottery for anyone who can book a flight or wade a river. The ruling didn’t close the door on this practice. It installed a deadbolt on the inside.

I’ve spent more than 30 years in finance. That means I understand one thing above most: the difference between a one-time cost and a compounding liability. California just had a permanent liability validated by the nation’s highest court. According to a September 2026 City Journal investigation by Christopher Rufo, Kenneth Schrupp, and Austen Hufford, the state spent at least $11 billion last fiscal year subsidizing undocumented immigrants. That number was designed to grow.

The Architecture

Federal law generally bars undocumented immigrants from most means-tested federal programs: Medicaid, SNAP, SSI, and TANF for undocumented adults. So, California invented a parallel system, funded with state money to sidestep federal restrictions entirely. Sacramento did not stumble into this arrangement. It was built deliberately, piece by piece, over years.

The flagship is Medi-Cal. California extended full-scope coverage to residents regardless of immigration status, enrolling roughly 1.7 million people, more than twice the state Legislative Analyst’s original projection. Estimated annual state cost: $10 billion. California routes this through its own general fund rather than federal Medicaid dollars specifically because federal law restricts federally funded coverage for undocumented residents. The state found the workaround and wrote the check. Taxpayers signed it.

The $100,000 Household

The City Journal investigation laid out a hypothetical five-person mixed-status household: two undocumented parents, two U.S.-born citizen children, and an undocumented grandparent. In a high-benefit scenario, that family could receive taxpayer-funded benefits and services valued above $100,000 annually. The package covers Medi-Cal, CalWORKs cash assistance for the citizen children, CalFresh food benefits, Section 8 housing subsidies, state tax credits, low-cost auto insurance, and a subsidized phone through California LifeLine.

To be precise: this isn’t a $100,000 check. It’s the cumulative value of services and subsidies, some flowing to citizen children as legally eligible beneficiaries, some directly to undocumented adults through California’s state-funded programs. The legal distinction matters. The cost to taxpayers stays the same.

Follow the Numbers

California’s share of the national tab is staggering. In FY2024, according to the HHS Administration for Children and Families, California accounted for approximately 59,622 child-only CalWORKs-related households where parents were immigration-status-ineligible, representing 81.4% of all such national spending. Annual cash assistance: approximately $617.55 million, at an average of $875 per month. The other 49 states split the remaining 18.6%.

The progressives in Sacramento are not embarrassed by any of this. Full-scope Medi-Cal for all ages, status irrelevant. A 2022 law extended food assistance to low-income residents with no immigration requirement. The Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants pays monthly aid to qualifying elderly and disabled noncitizens. Low-cost auto insurance is available regardless of status. A subsidized phone program accepts a Mexican consular ID in lieu of a Social Security number, per City Journal. Epictetus wrote that we don’t control what happens around us, only how we respond. California’s response has been to invoice the rest of us.

The Pragmatic Case, and Why It Collapses

Some argue this approach saves money. Uncompensated emergency room care costs more than preventive coverage. Healthier communities generate fewer downstream expenses. These aren’t fringe arguments; serious researchers have advanced them for years.

But this reasoning assumes the relevant comparison is between covering illegal immigrants and providing them emergency room care, not between the current system and enforcing immigration law. If the argument is that paying people to remain is cheaper than securing the border, then California has already decided that enforcement is off the table. That’s a policy choice. Sacramento just rarely states it that directly.

What Congress Can Do

Congress has authority it has not used. The 14th Amendment’s phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” has always contained interpretive space, and Congress has power to legislate its meaning independent of any executive order. More directly, Congress controls federal dollars. Legislation conditioning those dollars on compliance with federal immigration law would eliminate California’s ability to use federal funding as the base layer of a parallel benefit system it has built in open defiance of federal policy.

This isn’t a radical proposition. It’s a straightforward exercise of Article I authority that Congress has held since 1789. What’s been missing isn’t legal standing. It’s will.

California voters face a clear choice this November. Los Angeles already made its choice: more of the same, they doubled down on stupid choices for its mayoral election. The rest of the state has the chance to say something different. Plato observed that the price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by those less capable. California’s answer, apparently, is $11 billion a year and a subsidized phone.

My clients ask me regularly where California is headed financially. I give them an honest answer. A state that drives its productive class out with taxes and regulation, fails to house or educate its own citizens, and commits $11 billion annually to a population that entered illegally is making choices with compounding consequences. The Supreme Court locked in one of the biggest variables. Congress can still change the equation.

If it bothers to try.