For as long as I live, I will never forget Maria and her children. She left her home one day while her husband was at work, packed up what she could in her beat-up mini-van, took her children and left. Her first stop was the family service agency in a small city in northern California where I was working at the time.

She left because her husband beat her. The husband who was sponsoring her for citizenship. The husband who literally held her and her children’s lives with one hand, while he would abuse them with the other. For a brief period after she left her home, Maria and her kids lived in a shelter while they applied for and ultimately received CalWORKs, Medi-Cal, food stamps, and housing. As she and her children would return to the agency for coffee and check-ins with case workers I could tell the difference in her demeanor and her children. They were smiling, laughing, happy, and thriving. The shroud of fear that had once enveloped this young family was gone.

California has provided benefits to certain lawful immigrants since 1996 when the federal government placed arbitrary timelines on legal immigrants who need assistance. Instead, our state made the right choice by opting to provide some life-saving services to immigrants who played by the rules, but because of the natural ebbs and flows of life, needed a helping hand. When she applied for benefits, Maria was a Lawful Permanent Resident and her children were citizens, and if California had not taken steps to protect families like Maria’s, our state would be a far worse place for everyone to live.

Our state recognizes the contributions of immigrants. Newcomers make up over a quarter of the state’s population yet use public benefits in far lesser numbers than citizens. Immigrants in California have a combined federal tax contribution of more than $30 billion. And while some immigrants need some form of assistance immediately after arriving in the U.S., that necessity drops precipitously the longer they reside in the U.S. These are services that help people like Maria and her children get out of poverty, help them become employable, and make them self-sufficient. These programs are literally life-savers and lifelines for families in need.

It’s not just aid to needy families that the Governor has proposed to reduce or eliminate. It’s food assistance to lawful immigrants, who just like other Californians, are experiencing hardships that as a state we never thought we would see. It’s cash subsistence to legal elderly and disabled immigrants, many who worked for years in the United States before they became unable to work. It’s medical care for lawful immigrants that prevents them from having to frequent emergency rooms and long-term care facilities. Today, Maria’s children are happy, healthy, and thriving in school because of CalWORKs.

This is a tough year in California, to be sure. But is the answer really cutting away at our social safety net? Is pushing children into destitution and homelessness really the answer? It can’t be – we simply can’t let this happen.