Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who passed away Friday at age 90, once assailed illegal immigration as a net drain on working and middle-class Americans.
In 1993, while giving a press conference in the Senate building, Feinstein spoke about the prospects of the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was set to go into effect the following year. As part of NAFTA, Feinstein said Mexico ought to be required to enforce its side of the United States-Mexico border to stop illegal immigration in its tracks.
“I think you’ve seen the figures [for] state and local governments of what the cost is. It’s over $2 billion in California alone…that’s why the issue is now joined with two million illegal immigrants,” Feinstein told reporters before explaining how illegal immigration crushes Americans:
It’s a competition for space, whether the space is a job, the space is a home, [or] a place in a classroom, it becomes a competition for space. This is a country that’s based on immigration…and yet at times, you become so overtaxed you have to concentrate on saying, the people who should be here are those who come legally at this time…And for the time being, we’ve got to enforce our borders. [Emphasis added]
Then, in April 1994, while running for reelection in California, Feinstein joined the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s (FAIR) Dan Stein on Face the Nation to demand that the southern border be controlled and detail how illegal immigration was costing Americans billions in all kinds of social and economic costs at the time.
“Border control is a federal responsibility. We simply don’t enforce our borders adequately. In my state, you have about 2,000 people a day, illegally, who cross the border,” Feinstein said, continuing:
Now this adds up to about two million people who compete for housing, who compete for classroom space. We’ve had a Medicaid situation where, in 1988, there were about 3,000 people on Medicaid. There are well over 300,000 today who are illegal aliens. That presents obvious problems.
Feinstein went so far as to defend her position on controlling immigration from a liberal panelist who advocated open borders:
Any time you try to do anything except say it’s all lovely, you’re “un-American,” or you’re scapegoating, and it is my belief that the way you protect the front door of legal immigration is to close the back door of illegal immigrants, which you can’t control and you can’t well provide for. [Emphasis added]
U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, commonly referred to as “anchor babies” because they secure automatic birthright citizenship and can ultimately score green cards for their parents once they become adults, also caught the ire of Feinstein.
“I think we can enforce our borders. I think we should enforce our borders,” she said:
To have a situation where 40 percent of the babies born on Medicaid in California today are born of illegal immigrants creates a very real problem for the state, which is in [a] deficit. To have 17 percent of our prison population, at a cost of $300 million a year, be illegal immigrants who come here and commit felonies, that’s not what this nation is all about. [Emphasis added]
Today, nearly 3.6 million illegal aliens reside in California, along with 1.1 million anchor babies. Nationwide, there are nearly 17 million illegal aliens living across all 50 states, as well as 5.4 million anchor babies — far exceeding the annual total of American births.
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Randy Clark / BreitbartJohn Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
