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06-12-2006, 08:33 AM #1
Panel Hears Cost of Illegal Aliens
Panel hears cost of illegal aliens
Published Friday, June 9, 2006
JEFFERSON CITY (AP) - Illegal immigrants housed in Missouri prisons, receiving Medicaid benefits or enrolled in state colleges and universities aren’t that common, a House immigration committee was told yesterday.
Representatives from the Missouri State Highway Patrol and the Departments of Corrections, Elementary and Secondary Education, and Social Services told a special House committee created to study illegal immigration that the vast majority of people they serve are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants.
The panel’s chairman, Rep. Ed Emery, said knowing illegal immigration isn’t having much of an impact on certain parts of state government makes it easier to pinpoint what changes are needed.
"One of the things that we needed to know is how big is the problem and who is it for," said Emery, R-Lamar.
The immigration panel was created earlier this year by House Speaker Rod Jetton to study the effect of illegal immigration in Missouri and recommend changes to state departments and law. It comes in the midst of a national debate about how to handle immigration and what to do with those in the United States illegally.
The head of the nation’s immigration enforcement agency from 1989 to 1993 urged the panel to make it a state crime to be in Missouri without a legal immigration status and to deny medical, social service and education benefits to illegal immigrants.
Gene McNary said that educators, just like employers who hire illegal immigrants, should be able to be charged with the felony of harboring an illegal immigrant if they teach people who aren’t legally in the United States.
Rep. Tim Flook, pointing to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that requires all children in the United States be allowed a public education, cautioned against going too far with new laws.
"If we have a new law gummed up in our legal system, it really doesn’t do any good," Flook, R-Liberty, said. "We can all brag about how passed a law, but it doesn’t help."
The problem with trying to determine whether illegal immigrants are drawing state benefits is that many of the available statistics group legal and illegal immigrants together.
Sometimes, as with the corrections department, it’s because differentiating between the two wouldn’t have a significant impact in the agency’s operations. Other times, as with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, federal requirements bar state officials from asking about immigration status.
The corrections department Director Larry Crawford said only 422, or less than 2 percent, of the state prison population was born outside the United States.
The social services department reported that an even lower percentage of the number of people drawing Medicaid benefits are illegal immigrants. Department case workers must verify people without proof of citizenship, such as a Social Security card that appears authentic, are legal immigrants.
Mary Oetting, a lobbyist for the four-campus University of Missouri system, said students aren’t accepted if they don’t have citizenship or proper paperwork.
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06-12-2006, 09:12 AM #2
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such as a Social Security card that appears authentic, are legal immigrants.
MJ
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