Gov Jerry Brown is known as a big friend of open borders and amnesty, and he even supported a state DREAM Act during his gubernatorial campaign. More recently, he demonstrated his loyalty to those issues by signing the DREAM Act into law so illegal alien college students can get a taxpayer-subsidized college education (at a cost of $65 million annually), even as the state is closing parks because of red ink.

Brown appeared on San Francisco’s KGO radio earlier this week and answered call-in questions. He thinks that “the undocumented” are a financial resource for the state, when even liberal columnist George Skelton estimates the cost of illegals to be at least $5 billion annually. (Ten billion would be a start.)

Jerry Brown says lawmakers need to ‘man up,’ make budget cuts, San Francisco Chronicle Blog, April 13, 2012

Gov. Jerry Brown didn’t mince words on his 40-minute appearance on KGO radio’s Ronn Owens show this morning, saying that Sacramento lawmakers need to “man up” and make the billions of dollars worth of budget cuts he proposed in January, and also predicting that the state’s shortfall could exceed the $9 billion his administration estimated four months ago.

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When a caller asked about the cost of illegal immigrants to the state — and Owens followed up with remarks about the the undocumented population using school, prison and other resources — the governor didn’t skip a beat.

“Most of them are doing a hell of a lot of work, and most of the food you eat was picked by undocumented workers,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons California is still growing. We need people to buy homes. We also need immigration reform and border security, but don’t just scapegoat people … By the way if nobody came to California anymore, your property value would go down.”

Owens pushed that point, asking the governor if he really believed illegal immigrants help keep property values up.

“I’m telling you if 2 million undocumented people were rounded up tomorrow, and put on buses and sent to the foriegn countries from which they came, there would be a massive drop economic activity. They are working, buying things, paying for things,” he said.

Brown argued there ought to be a path to citizenship, noting he signed the Dream Act — allowing some undoucmented college students to apply for financial aide — and saying he is “glad” if a kids with farm worker parents go on to succeed in the business world.