What's Fair To Ask Of Washington.(ISSUES & INSIGHTS)(EDITORIALS)(Editorial)

Immigration: As the "Collectinator" has learned, not all states get the same return on their federal tax dollars. Nor should they. But they do deserve a secure border.

Governors seem hard-wired to complain that too little of the money sent from their states to the nation's capital makes the round trip. Often they will claim to be shortchanged when something else is going on, like demographic trends or conflicting political agendas.

Arnold Schwarzenegger ran up against these realities earlier this month when he went to Washington and tried to get California's fractious congressional delegation to speak with one voice on the subject of federal funds.

California is a donor state, sending more in tax money to Washington than it gets back in federal spending. Its situation is mostly due to factors outside Washington's control, like a relatively young population profile (which holds down Social Security and Medicare payments), high-income taxpayers and a decline in the state's defense industry.

At the same time, the state's politicians are too divided along party lines to agree on what they want. Even if they could agree, they wouldn't necessarily deserve to get their way. Washington doesn't owe any state a one-to-one return on tax dollars.

But it does owe states certain things, such as a meaningful national border. It should not be up to states to enforce immigration law or to pay for the feds' failure to do so.

On that score, the governors of border states such as California and Arizona have real cause to complain.