Thursday, January 3, 2008
Unreliable Numbers


Winston-Salem Journal

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Some Forsyth County commissioners are so desperate for tougher immigration laws that they’re ready to use the results of a flawed study to lobby for those laws. Tougher laws are needed. But this is a push that must be based on fact, not on questionable numbers that can fan flames of hatred for Hispanic immigrants.

Commissioners Walter Marshall and Ted Kaplan have raised serious questions about the internal study and its finding of annual costs of almost $11.2 million in services to illegal immigrants.

Even Joe Bartel, the man behind the study and the county’s budget director, acknowledges the study’s flaws. Bartel had his office do the study at the request of Commissioner Beaufort Bailey. But in a letter to Bailey about the study, Bartel said that most of the estimates on the number of “undocumented Hispanics … seem to be mostly anecdotal.â€