Dispute over illegal immigrants imperils California family planning program for the poor

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

California is locked in a dispute with Washington that state officials say has imperiled a successful family planning program for the poor, reports Jordan Rau.

The program saves federal and state taxpayers more than $1.4 billion annually, the officials say, by helping low-income women avoid unwanted pregnancies. The Bush administration wants the state to change the way it counts the illegal immigrants who use the service.

Since it began receiving Medicaid money in 1998, the state has used a statistical method to estimate the number of illegal immigrants in the Family PACT program, currently calculated at 14%. But the Bush administration, which has been objecting to this method since 2004, last month told California it had 30 days to begin vetting every participant to determine if each is in the country legally, or lose all federal funding.

Read more about how changes in how illegal immigrants are counted could jeopardize a successful family planning program for the poor in California.

Click here for more about immigration.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City