http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/200 ... 38035.html

By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK - The Republican candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general called Monday for a study to determine the financial impact of illegal immigration on state funding.

Lieutenant governor candidate Jim Holt, a state senator from Springdale, and attorney general candidate Gunner DeLay of Fort Smith, a former state senator, advocated the study during a news conference before embarking on two-day trek across the state to promote their plans to curb illegal immigration in Arkansas.

"I think it's time we do that study. I'd like to see that addressed at the next legislative session," said DeLay, who said he proposed such a study in 1997 when he was in the state House of Representatives but failed to get it approved.

"We do know from what other states have done that there is a financial impact on health care costs, education and incarceration from the effects of illegal immigration," DeLay said.

The two candidates had planned to fly from Little Rock to Harrison, Mountain Home, Jonesboro and Magnolia on Monday to discuss their proposals to address illegal immigration, but poor weather grounded the flight.

Instead, they drove from Little Rock to Jonesboro and Magnolia for events. They planned stops today in Texarkana, De Queen, Mena and Springdale.

DeLay faces Democrat Dustin McDaniel in the Nov. 7 general election for attorney general. Holt faces Democrat Bill Halter of North Little Rock in the lieutenant governor's race.

DeLay and Holt both said Monday that the federal government has done a poor job of combating illegal immigration.

DeLay said the purpose of the trip was to inform voters of their views on illegal immigration and their proposals to address the problem.

He said, if elected, he would use the attorney general's Medicaid Fraud unit to investigate employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. He also said he would push for an amendment to the Unfair Trade Practices Act so the attorney general's office "can go after employers who use illegal immigration to gain an unfair competitive advantage."

He said he would try to create a new civil cause of action where taxpayers, school districts or the attorney general's office could recover the cost of educating the children of illegal immigrants.

DeLay criticized McDaniel, his Democratic opponent, for voting for a measure during the 2005 session that would have made the children of undocumented immigrants eligible for state-funded college scholarships if they completed high school in Arkansas.

Melissa Moody, McDaniel's campaign spokeswoman, said DeLay's comments Monday were "not new and it's not news," noting that Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee supported the legislation, which passed the House but failed in the Senate.

"This is demagoguery, and it is evidence of his desperation going into the last three weeks of the campaign," Moody said.

Holt said that, as lieutenant governor, said he would urge the Legislature to reconsider legislation he filed in 2005 to ban illegal immigrants from receiving public benefits and punish state officials who knowingly grant benefits to people in the United States illegally. The bill died in a Senate committee.

"We need to stop doing things that entice illegal aliens to come here," Holt said, noting that Arkansas has one of the fastest growing Hispanic populations in the nation.

The Republican from Springdale also said he wants to make sure that the planned new Mexican consulate in Little Rock does not hand out ID cards to illegal immigrants recklessly.

"It's not fair to give benefits to people here illegally, when we don't give them to our own citizens," Holt said.

He and DeLay said illegal immigration is a concern of many Arkansans and that the issue is government spending on people who shouldn't be in the state, not racism.

Bud Jackson, Halter's campaign spokesman, said Monday that Halter agreed that illegal immigration is a serious problem.

"He opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants and believes we should crack down on employers who illegally employee them," Jackson said. "He also believes that our federal government has let our state down by not adequately enforcing and protecting our borders, and he would point out that Jim Holt has not once asked members of his party in Washington or the Republican administration to do more on the federal level."