Thread: Arkansas: State Legislature discusses illegal immigration

State Legislature discusses illegal immigration
Aug 13, 2007
By Jason Wiest
THE MORNING NEWS
LITTLE ROCK -- Immigrants, both legal and illegal, cost the state about $170 million a year, according to statistics state agencies provided Monday to a joint meeting of legislative committees studying the impact of illegal immigration in Arkansas.

Public secondary education accounts for $154 million of the expense, although some of that cost is attributable to legal immigrants because student citizenship status is not tracked.

State courts and police departments spent $14.7 million on immigrants in 2004, while the state Department of Correction spent $1.8 million on illegal immigrants last year.

"We must close the barn door before everything's gone," said Sen. Ruth Whittaker, R-Cedarville. "This is going to have an enormous economic impact on our state far beyond what any of us imagined."

Some members of the House and Senate Interim Committees on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs hope to lay the groundwork this summer for enacting legislation during the 2009 regular session to curb the population surge of illegal immigrants, similar to efforts already enacted in surrounding states.

Arkansas' Hispanic population grew 48 percent between 2000 and 2005, faster than any other state, according to a 2007 study by The Urban Institute.

While Congress has struggled to produce much immigration legislation, last year state governments passed twice as many laws regarding illegal immigration than the year prior, according to a study by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Oklahoma recently passed legislation denying jobs and public benefits to illegal immigrants. Tennessee now revokes the business licenses of companies that knowingly employ illegal immigrants and has made it a crime to transport them into the state.

This year, Arkansas lawmakers made it illegal for state contractors to hire illegal immigrants, but failed to pass legislation that would have made it illegal to harbor and transport illegal immigrants into the state.

"With the states around us getting pretty tough on employers and illegal immigrants themselves, we don't want to become the only haven in the area," said Rep. Donna Hutchinson, R-Bella Vista, noting that she is a member of the Blackfoot Indian tribe.

"And if you want to know what happens when you don't secure your borders, ask any Indian," she said.

Rep. Jon Woods, R-Springdale, said a doctor in his district told him of an illegal immigrant who was trying to claim residency from a hotel room to get Medicaid benefits.

Woods said he expects the cost of illegal immigrants to the state to double once information from the Department of Health is available. A study commissioned by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation estimated that the net cost to the state for health services to immigrants in 2004 was $36.7 million.

Investigating and documenting such costs will help the state gain the "whole picture" of illegal immigrants' economic impact, Woods said.

The same study found that the total annual economic impact of immigrants on the state's economy is nearly $3 billion. Illegal immigrants make possible $1.4 billion in production annually for state manufacturers and other companies, which pay them $95 million less than they would legal citizens, the study found.

Focused on finding ways to trim state expenses, legislators honed in on the Arkansas Department of Education, which spent $4.6 million last year to provide educational services to 23,599 students who were not proficient in English, known as English Language Learners. Of these students, 88 percent are Hispanic, but not necessarily illegal.

The 13,000-student Springdale School District alone had 6,126 such students.

"If we're looking at places that we can save money, I think we just found the pot at the end of the rainbow right here," said Rep. Denny Sumpter, D-West Memphis.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court requires such education for students who need it, regardless of their citizenship status, said Andre Guerrero, director of the state Education Department's English Language Learners office.

Still, legislators said they wanted to track education expenses for illegal immigrants, which isn't done because of the Supreme Court ruling.

"I think it's incumbent on the Legislature to be able to recognize and identify to the taxpayers of the state what benefits are being paid to those that are not legal citizens, whether we can do anything about it or not," said Rep. Rick Green, R-Van Buren.

The committee has another meeting scheduled on the matter in September.

http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2007/ ... grtion.txt

Geez, I wouldn't wait until 2009 it just might be to late, just what is holding you back.
But at least you are starting to get it and that is a step in the right direction!!


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