It started with in-state tuition. Then came driver’s licenses, new rules designed to limit deportations and state-funded healthcare for children. And on Monday, in a gesture heavy with symbolism, came a new law to erase the word “alien” from California’s labor code.

Together, these piecemeal measures have taken on a significance greater than their individual parts — a fundamental shift in the relationship between California and its residents who live in the country illegally. The various benefits, rights and protections add up to something experts liken to a kind of California citizenship.

The changes have occurred with relatively little political rancor, which is all the more remarkable given the heated national debate about illegal immigration that has been inflamed by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.

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“We’ve passed the Rubicon here,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist. “This is not an academic debate on the U.S. Senate floor about legal and illegal and how high you want to build the wall…. [The state] doesn’t have the luxury of being ideological…. The undocumented are not going anywhere.”

Democratic lawmakers and immigration activists, with diminishing opposition from the GOP, continue to seek new laws and protections. These measures include cracking down on employers withholding pay from low-wage workers and expanding state-subsidized healthcare to adult immigrants without papers.

These new initiatives face obstacles, but backers say such hurdles center on the hefty price tags of the programs, not political fallout from the immigration debate.

California officials have been spurred into action in part by the lack of action in Washington to overhaul the nation’s immigration system. The stall in Congress has motivated advocates to push for changes in state laws. But they acknowledge that their victories are limited without national reform.

“The reality is, despite the bills that we’ve done, there are up to 3 million undocumented immigrants that still live in the shadows,” said Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville), chairman of the Latino Legislative Caucus. “Their legal status as immigrants does not change — only Congress can do that.”

Karthick Ramakrishnan, a public policy professor at UC Riverside, calls what’s emerging “the California package”: an array of policies that touch on nearly every aspect of immigrant life, from healthcare to higher education to protection from federal immigration enforcement.

[The state] doesn’t have the luxury of being ideological…. The undocumented are not going anywhere.
– Republican strategist Mike Madrid
Other states have adopted components of the package; Connecticut, for example, offers in-state tuition and driver’s licenses, and passed legislation known as the Trust Act to help limit deportations before California did.

But Ramakrishnan said California is unique in how comprehensive its offerings are.

Most of these laws were passed after 2000, and became especially plentiful after 2012, when President Obama took executive action that shielded from deportation people who were brought to the country illegally.

California was one of the first states to authorize driver’s licenses for those affected by Obama’s order; two years later, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law enabling all immigrants in the U.S. illegally to seek licenses. The same year, the state expanded in-state tuition for more students in the country illegally and allowed people without legal status to obtain law and other professional licenses.

There have been symbolic wins too, such as a law last year to repeal vestiges of Proposition 187. The initiative, which overwhelmingly passed in 1994, denied immigrants in the country illegally access to public services; it had been mostly overturned by the courts. And on Monday, Brown signed a measure striking the word “alien” — seen as derogatory to those not born in the U.S. — from the state’s labor laws… READ THE REST HERE.