Chesterfield awaits study on illegal immigrants
It was made to gauge how population affects services for residents

Thursday, Aug 16, 2007 - 12:08 AM Updated: 12:44 AM

By JULIAN WALKER
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Chesterfield officials should find out today or tomorrow how the county's illegal immigrant population affects the services it provides to residents.

A report comes more than one year after the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors asked county staff to review the government's costs for providing services to undocumented residents.

An initial report, issued last August, indicated that Chesterfield had 13,523 foreign-born residents. Of that number, an estimated 2,400 to 2,700 county residents were undocumented, according to the county planning department.

Because much of that document was based on educated guesswork by county departments, the report noted "that there was no way to accurately estimate the use of services currently by undocumented residents and, therefore, no way to estimate costs."

The new report will include some firm cost figures, deputy county administrator Rebecca T. Dickson said.

"There will be numbers in some selective areas where we can make reasonable estimates," she said. "But in some areas there's no way to reasonably estimate how many [undocumented people] we might be servicing."

Dickson said the report will also include steps the county has taken in recent years to limit services to legal residents and options the county can consider to further restrict who receives access to county programs.

Chesterfield Board of Supervisors Chairman Kelly E. Miller, one of the officials who called for the study, said he remains unsure what the county can legally do to limit taxpayer-funded services to undocumented immigrants. But he is firm in the belief that they should be available only to those who are legally in this country.

"As soon as we get [the report], we'll try to formulate our position on it," Miller said yesterday. "Hopefully within a month, we could be looking at it from a board perspective. But I'm not overly optimistic that we'll get a lot of details."

The 2006 report also said the county's undocumented immigrant population could be higher than estimated.

"Given the nature of the undocumented immigrant population, any estimate of its magnitude and location requires broad assumptions, the accuracy of which cannot be measured," the August 2006 report states. "Staff anecdotal experiences indicate a foreign-born population in Chesterfield that is growing quite rapidly.

"While there is no way to know what percentage of this population is undocumented, Hispanic advocates in the county have indicated that the percentage may be substantially higher than the estimates. . . . If this is the case, the undocumented population may be growing at a significantly more rapid pace," the report added.

Some of the findings in Chesterfield's August 2006 analysis were based on conclusions in a 2004 study done by the state Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. It listed Chesterfield as one of 12 Virginia localities with foreign-born populations of 5 percent to 10 percent based on data from the 2000 U.S. census. The 11 others were Henrico, Albemarle, York and Montgomery counties and Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Charlottesville, Winchester, Harrisonburg, Williamsburg and Galax.

The only communities with larger concentrations were the Northern Virginia localities of Alexandria, Arlington, Loudoun and Prince William counties.

In recent months, officials in two of those counties -- Loudoun and Prince William -- have taken steps to deny some public services to undocumented residents and have local police enforce federal immigration laws.

Meanwhile, Spotsylvania County officials this week initiated a study similar to Chesterfield's effort to see what government services are going to noncitizens.

Some Chesterfield functions, such as public education, nutrition programs through the Heath Department and mental-health and substance-abuse services, are required by federal law to be provided regardless of status.
Contact Julian Walker at (804) 649-6831 or jwalker@timesdispatch.com.

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