The report estimates that California taxpayers spent at least $11 billion subsidizing illegal immigrants during the last fiscal year. Federal law prohibits states from spending federal money on illegal immigrants, so Sacramento built a shadow welfare system financed with state and local funds and opened it to anyone who walks in. Residents paying the nation's highest tax rates cover the tab. The pool of potential beneficiaries keeps growing, with more than a quarter of California's residents today foreign-born.

Reporters for the outlet visited four public-services offices across Southern California to see how the system works on the ground. Officials at every stop confirmed that illegal immigrants can sign up for benefits themselves or collect them through their children. Nobody seemed concerned about who might be asking.

The authors described the reception they got from caseworkers in Glendale and Los Angeles, where staff walked them through the eligibility rules for noncitizens.

Local officials were remarkably transparent. In Glendale, we spoke to a welfare officer about California's Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), a state-funded alternative to Supplemental Security Income that provides monthly cash assistance to low-income noncitizens who are elderly or disabled.

 "If [you are] a citizen, you cannot get CAPI," he said. "I don't care about legal or not. Not being [a] citizen [is the key]."

 In Los Angeles, we heard more of the same. We asked another welfare officer about the benefits available to illegal immigrants and their children. While some state programs are closed to illegals, we learned, they are open to those aliens' U.S.-born children.

For the children, the key program is CalWORKs, California's counterpart to the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Illegal immigrant parents remain ineligible themselves, yet they can draw payments on behalf of any child born in the United States.

"If you were born here and the child was born here, you get money for two," the welfare officer told the reporters. "Because she is not and the child is, she only gets money for the child, and not for her."