Gov. Gavin Newsom of California on Friday vetoed a bill that would have helped some undocumented immigrants buy homes in the state, moving quickly to extinguish a potential flashpoint in the presidential election.
The proposal, which would have expanded an existing loan program for first-time home buyers to include undocumented immigrants with Social Security or taxpayer identification numbers, had been widely criticized by Republicans as Democratic largess provided to immigrants living in the United States without authorization.
The bill moved through the California Legislature late last month as former President Donald J. Trump and Republicans continued to attack Democrats as lax on immigration. Trump, in his bid to return to the White House, has already tried to blame Vice President Kamala Harris for various liberal policies in her home state of California, including those in which she played no role.
California Republicans argued that the state should prioritize legal residents for any state home-buying assistance, but the bill passed easily along party lines in the Legislature, where Democrats have a supermajority in both houses. By that time, it was already a cause célèbre on right-wing media outlets.
On his social platform X, Elon Musk posted last week that “half of Earth should move to California, given all the incentives to do so.” And Trump this week capitalized on the conversation, vowing in a speech to the Economic Club of New York in Manhattan to bar undocumented immigrants from obtaining mortgages.
Home loans to undocumented people living in the United States are legal but rare. However, California Democrats have pointedly sought to remove immigration status as a condition of receiving a number of state benefits, including health insurance, college financial aid and, most recently, campus jobs at state-funded universities.
In 2022, California still had more unauthorized immigrants than any other state — 1.8 million, according to the Pew Research Center. But that number had been declining in California, while it was increasing in Texas, which had 1.6 million, and elsewhere in the nation.
The Democratic state assemblyman Joaquin Arambula, who was the author of the California bill, had argued that the legislation was not about immigration but rather fairness in the face of the state’s housing crisis. He said on Friday that he was “deeply disappointed” in the governor’s veto.
The bill, he said in a statement, was about helping people, including undocumented immigrants, achieve their “dream of owning a home so that generational wealth can be passed to their children. They are people who are responsible, work hard, and pay their ample share of taxes.”
As the bill threatened to persist as a talking point into next week, when the presidential debate between Trump and Harris is scheduled to take place, speculation mounted over whether Newsom would sign it. The legislation was nine days old when his veto arrived, and it was the first bill he rejected during his September bill-signing period.
Citing “finite funding,” the Democratic governor wrote in his veto message that “expanding program eligibility must be carefully considered within the broader context of the annual state budget to ensure we manage our resources effectively.”
Some Democratic legislators pointed out that the bill was largely symbolic, because the program, known as California Dream for All, had already awarded all of the funding that comes from state taxpayers.
Run by an independent state agency, the program offers down payment assistance of up to $150,000 to first-time home buyers who qualify based on income; in Los Angeles County, for instance, a buyer would have to earn $155,000 or less. Borrowers who sell their homes have to pay back the original down payment loan, as well as a share of the increased value in what is known as a “shared appreciation” loan. Those payments, which are separate from state appropriations, help fund the program.
Shawn Hubler is a reporter with The New York Times. Copyright 2024, The New York Times.
