http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/11 ... 1_4_05.txt

Conference looks at border county issues

By: WILLIAM FINN BENNETT - Staff Writer

As the debate over illegal immigration roils across the nation, the 24 counties lining the U.S./Mexico border from California to Texas say they are paying too high a price for everything from jails to cross-border air pollution. And they want the federal government to reimburse them for those costs, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based U.S./Mexico Border Counties Coalition said Friday.

Against that backdrop, representatives from many of those counties are scheduled to meet at a San Diego hotel Saturday for the semi-annual U.S./Mexico Border Counties Convention. They will discuss the effects that illegal immigration is having on their coffers and examine ways of convincing the federal government to pay them what they say they are owed, a convention organizer said.

Some 50 participants were scheduled to participate in a panel discussion today on immigration reform with Ruben Barrales, a special assistant to President Bush and director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, said coalition spokeswoman Dian Copelin. The organization is made up of the 24 border counties and has offices in Washington, San Francisco and El Paso, Texas.

A county sheriff from Texas also was scheduled to address attendees on the law enforcement challenges facing border counties. At the request of Imperial County officials, participants are scheduled to vote on a resolution addressing border air pollution, according to the conference agenda.

Attendees will also get a first peek at a draft of an economic study of the border region, Copelin said.

The study puts together data on the 24 counties as if they were a state and then compares that data against the country's 50 states, on things such as employment, income, poverty and health care, she said.

The weekend conference, which began Friday, is being held at the Hyatt Regency Islandia Hotel and Marina, in San Diego.

The coalition was formed about six years ago, Copelin said. The driving force that led to its creation, she added, was what border county officials termed the federal government's failure to pay its fair share for the costs that border counties bear from illegal immigration.

One of the highest immigration-related costs for border counties is for the jailing of illegal immigrants who have committed crimes, Copelin said.

"Border counties spend over $100 million a year on that, and now are only getting reimbursed about $12 million collectively," she said.

Statewide, California spends $750 million per year to incarcerate some 18,000 undocumented felons in its prisons, an official with the state Department of Finance said Friday. He noted that the figure represents more than 10 percent of the estimated 165,000 felons who are currently in state prisons.

On Friday, a joint House and Senate committee in Washington approved a $37 million increase in the amount the federal government reimburses California for its costs to keep those criminals in jails and prisons, bringing the total amount the federal government reimburses California to $149 million, said H.D. Palmer, deputy director for the state Department of Finance.

Copelin emphasized that the coalition does not have an anti-illegal immigrant agenda, but simply wants to get the federal government to do the right thing.

"The counties do bear a lot of the costs associated with illegal immigration and immigration is a federal issue, so they believe the federal government should be paying these costs," Copelin said.

The organization holds the border counties convention twice a year, once in the spring in Washington, D.C., and once in the fall in one of the border states.

According to the coalition's Web site, http://www.bordercounties.org, the organization pushes for legislation and other policies to reimburse to border counties the costs associated with being located on the U.S.-Mexico border.