State study of immigration fraught with complications
Result must be humane and politically viable.

A column by Kevin Leininger of The News-Sentinel

Indiana’s Medicaid program spent about $18 million on emergency services for illegal immigrants in 2006 - most of it on health care for mothers giving birth to children who automatically became full-fledged U.S. citizens.

If that complication wasn’t enough to doom this year’s attempt to address the situation in the Indiana General Assembly, pressure from business interests and ethnic lobbyists was.

So an area legislator is only too aware of the very large bull’s-eye on his back as he prepares to co-chair a committee charged with studying illegal immigration’s effect on Indiana - and with crafting a humane, effective and politically viable response to a problem not of its making and largely beyond its control.

“I always go into things with optimism, and maybe we’ll be able to reach consensus on some points,â€