Poll: Californians Back Migrant Health Care, Despite Budget

A poll out of Politico and UC Berkeley's Citrin Center new partnership suggested on Saturday that a slight majority of Californians back the idea of providing free or low-cost health care to illegal immigrants despite budget constraints.

The poll found that 53% support offering California's Medicaid program for illegal immigrants, while 48% said the state should scale back or never have offered the coverage at all.

Among those in favor of giving illegal immigrants Medi-Cal access, 21% said California's Medicaid program should continue to be offered even if it means making more budget cuts to other state programs. Additionally, 32% said they were in favor of providing the illegal migrants government-subsidized health care as long as legal residents are prioritized before cuts to the state's budget.

Meanwhile, 31% of voters said the state should never have extended Medi-Cal to illegal migrants in the first place, and another 17% supported partially or fully rolling back the program entirely.

"There's broad support for the state's Medicaid program for undocumented immigrants," Berkley's Citrin Center told Politico, while noting there was some "nuance."

"I think there will be resistance among the state government to cutting Medicaid, but if they have to, presumably they might start changing which undocumented get access, maybe limiting it to children and elderly people, rather than everyone, … tinkering with that."

The poll comes amid growing financial strain on the state's budget. Medi-Cal, according to Politico, is running 7.5% higher than projected last year as the state deals with a deficit in the billions.

The survey was conducted from April 1 to April 14 by TrueDot.ai and polled 1,025 registered California voters and 718 "influencers," including lawmakers and staffers. The margin of error was ±5 points.

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