By Over the past few years, Democrats have been explicit in lamenting their failure “to deliver for the people we care about most.”
In a move that has shocked some, California Democrats have decided to go all in on illegal immigration, becoming the first state to offer undocumented immigrants access to state-supported home loans of up to $150,000. The proposal comes after the state was likely encouraged by Kamala Harris accepting the nomination last week.
As the California Legislature, where Democrats hold a supermajority, prepares to vote on the measure this week, the proposal is expected to pass in a state that is home to the largest population of undocumented immigrants in the nation.
Harris, in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, reaffirmed her commitment to immigration reform, positioning the country as a “nation of immigrants” and has already begun laying the groundwork to a “path to citizenship” so that those who receive these huge home loans will also become voters.
Politico writes that the bill’s author, Fresno Democrat Joaquin Arambula, countered that the bill specifies applicants must meet requirements set by the Federal National Mortgage Association, or Fannie Mae, including having a taxpayer identification number or social security number to apply for a loan, which means they’re taxpayers.
“It isn’t given out willy nilly to just anybody,” Democratic Assemblymember Eloise Gómez Reyes said at the June hearing.
The loan program, called California Dream for All, provides 20 percent in down payment assistance, up to $150,000. It is a shared appreciation loan in which the only interest the homebuyer pays would be 15 or 20 percent of the home’s increase in value upon selling the property, depending on their income level. The program has received state funding but is also run by the California Housing Finance Agency, which generates revenue through mortgage loans and not from taxpayers.
Arambula said he doesn’t want to conflate the larger immigration issue with his proposal. The bill has no registered opposition, but it may nonetheless be caught up in the political crossfire as the election nears. The proposal is a response to an existing federal law that prevents undocumented immigrants from participating in state benefits without a state law providing for eligibility.
“We simply wanted to be as inclusive as possible within our policies so that all who are paying taxes here in our state were able to qualify,” Arambula told POLITICO. “Without the intentional law that we are introducing, we felt that there were complexities and questions that many in the immigrant community would have.”
The New York Times recently noted that Democrats are “walking a delicate line” between saying what they want—open borders and large influxes of illegal immigration—and what the public wants—a secure border and a reasonable legal immigration system.
“When Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination last week at her party’s convention in Chicago, she sought to strike a delicate balance on the issue of immigration, promising to approach enforcement and security at the nation’s southern border as the prosecutor she once was, without abandoning the country’s values.
It was the kind of equilibrium on the issue that Democrats had striven for all week — a leveling between calls for more officers and judges at the country’s southern border and a system that treats people humanely, between promises to uphold the law and rebukes of the fear-mongering over ‘the other’ that has permeated the national immigration debate.
But the overall message on immigration from the Democratic Party in the past week, as it has been since Ms. Harris announced her candidacy last month, has been decidedly more hard-line than it has been in decades. The shift reflects just how much of a political vulnerability the issue remains for Ms. Harris and down-ballot Democratic candidates in November, as many voters have come to see the challenges at the southern border as a top concern, and a small but growing minority of Republicans and independents want to curb pathways into the country.
The most common refrain from the stage in Chicago was a denunciation of former President Donald J. Trump and Republicans for tanking a bipartisan border security deal this year that, as former President Barack Obama said on Tuesday, was ‘written in part by one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress.’”
California Democrats appear to have accidentally said the quiet part out loud and it could sink their Native Daughter presidential candidate for the White House.
