Board to vote on sending bill to feds
By KEITH WALKER
kwalker@potomacnews.com
Monday, February 12, 2007

The Prince William Board of County Supervisors is set to bill the feds for the cost of illegal immigrants.

The board will vote Tuesday on whether to send a $2,731,705 invoice to the U.S. Congress to pay for the services the county rendered to illegal immigrants in 2006.

Letters to Vice President Richard B. Cheney in his role as president of the U.S. Senate and Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, will accompany the invoice.

Staff arrived at the $2.7 million figure by calculating how much it spent to jail illegal immigrants at the Prince William-Manassas regional jail and at the Prince William County Juvenile Detention Center.

The county also counted the cost of emergency Medicaid services rendered based on 921 applications from illegal immigrants.

The letters to Pelosi and Cheney state the county could not get a complete estimate of what illegal immigrants cost the county because federal law, in many instances, prohibits local jurisdictions from determining immigration status.

So the county could only legally document those illegal immigrants in the jail and detention center and add in the Medicaid costs as well.

The letters also charged the federal government with determining the cost of illegal immigration on local jurisdictions, initiating a federal study to determine the effect of illegal immigration on the public education system and reimbursing local governments for the total costs associated with illegal immigration.

Also on the agenda is a vote to enter into a license with the Rainbow Center 4-H Therapeutic Riding Program to be instituted on a a 45-acre parcel at the county's Silver Lake property near Haymarket.

The riding program is designed to help people with special needs gain physical, emotional and cognitive benefits from riding horses.

The board will also hear its monthly update from the Virginia Department of Transportation and the Prince William County Department of Transportation.

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