Poll: Strong public support for immigrant health care

It was a breakthrough event befitting Cesar Chavez Day: A major poll showed that California voters support providing taxpaid health care for immigrants living here illegally.

In all the polling by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California over many years, it had never before found support among likely voters for giving fullblown public health care to undocumented immigrants.

Chavez co-founded a labor group in the 1960s that ultimately became the United Farm Workers Union. Many of those he organized were immigrants here illegally. Wednesday was his birthday and an official state holiday. He would have been 94.

Public attitudes toward immigrants without legal status have changed dramatically since Chavez died in 1993.

In 1994, Californians voted overwhelmingly for Proposition 187 to deny schooling, nonemergency health care and other public services to immigrants who entered the country illegally. A federal judge ruled the initiative unconstitutional.

For years, the Legislature fought over whether to allow driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. Finally, logic prevailed: They were driving anyway. It was better for everyone if undocumented immigrants first took a driver’s test and learned the rules of the road.

This logic may be carrying over to health care. During the pandemic, people soon realized that their own health largely depended on the health of their neighbors and everyone else.

In a statewide survey, the PPIC asked California adults: “Do you favor or oppose providing health care coverage for undocumented immigrants in California?”

When asked of all adults, regardless of whether they were registered voters, most previously have answered that they favored providing the benefit. In this poll, 66% of all adults answered affirmatively, a 12-percentagepoint increase since 2015.

And for the first time, likely voters also agreed, and by a large margin: 58% to 39%.

In the 2015 PPIC poll, the answers were reversed: Only 42% of likely voters favored providing health care and 55% were opposed. In a 2007 survey, 32% were in favor and 63% opposed.

In the new poll, only Republican voters continued to oppose offering the benefit — a whopping 79%.

Republicans are out of sync with the majority of Californians on many issues — one reason they haven’t elected anyone to statewide office since 2006 and now are essentially irrelevant in the Legislature with a superminority in each house.

Among Democrats, 84% favored providing public health care. So did 55% of independents.

Mark Baldassare, the PPIC president and pollster, believes it’s the pandemic that has quickened the acceptance of health care for all.

Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access, a Sacramento-based lobby-activist organization, says: “The pandemic has been Exhibit A why we all depend on each other. It matters to my health whether everyone has access to health care. The pandemic doesn’t care about one’s immigration status.”

There are two relevant bills pending in the Legislature. Estimates vary, but it would at least cost hundreds of millions of dollars — or around $3 billion if every undocumented immigrant was covered.

All low-income young people through age 25 are already eligible for MediCal, the state’s version of federal Medicaid health care for the poor, regardless of immigration status.

Last year, Newsom briefly budgeted for extending coverage to seniors 65 and over. Let’s face it, they need medical care a lot more than young adults. But Newsom withdrew the proposal because of fiscal jitters.

This year, Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles, has introduced legislation to cover seniors. And Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula, D-Fresno, an emergency room physician, is pushing a bill to cover everyone by 2026.

“We call a lot of these people essential workers but don’t take care of their essential needs,” Arambula says. “The question is whether the governor will make universal health care a priority.”

That’s what Newsom promised while running for governor.