http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opin ... 51806.html

Crowding concerns hit home
Neighborhoods weather crunch
Published on: 05/18/06

Illegal immigration holds challenges for every level of government. But it is at the local level — in the neighborhoods, the schools, the health clinics and emergency rooms — where the problem is felt most acutely and often gets the least attention.

Ultimately, the issue must be solved at the federal level. But unchecked illegal immigration is having a profound impact, right now, in hundreds of ways in the older suburbs surrounding Atlanta, where many of the state's 400,000 to 800,000 illegal immigrants have settled.

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Catalina Erneston told Cobb officials last year about a home on her street where she said as many as 20 people lived. Such homes are 'what passes for low-cost housing in much of the illegal immigrant community,' Mike King writes.

In public schools, for instance, the cost of providing English instruction for immigrant children is staggering and has forced local districts to adjust budgets by diverting money from other programs. (The great irony is that some districts have stopped providing foreign language instruction for English-speaking elementary school students.)

County health clinics and emergency rooms throughout the metro area have become the first — and frequently the only — place where illegal immigrants can get the care they need. The state Medicaid program that pays for much of these services now runs about $100 million annually, but most experts believe that covers only a fraction of the cost. When hospitals aren't reimbursed for the care they provide, they try to shift the costs elsewhere — usually by passing them on to privately insured patients.

As costly as these services are, most are required by federal law. Even if local politicians wanted to shut the schoolhouse door to the children of illegal immigrants, federal courts have said they can't. It's the same with emergency medical care. Show up in an emergency room with a serious illness or life-threatening injury, and you must be treated.

But beyond that it gets more subjective. Indeed, one of the hardest issues local governments face involves what's happening in the neighborhoods where illegal immigrants have settled in large numbers.

This isn't to say that wherever illegal immigrants settle, property values decline. Not so. But in some of these neighborhoods — Fair Oaks in Cobb County and parts of Marietta, Smyrna and Roswell to name just a few — the impact has been devastating. Two- and three-bedroom homes once occupied by families of five or six have become de facto boarding houses where a dozen or more adults and children — sometimes related, often not — live in basements and garages and where everyone shares the same bathroom.

Besides being eyesores, they have become fire hazards and threats to public health. But housing inspectors feel powerless to do anything about them unless someone inside the house complains. And who would do that? Unfortunately, this is what passes for low-cost housing in much of the illegal immigrant community.

In some cases, the deterioration of these neighborhoods preceded the arrival of immigrants, as did their transition from owner-occupied houses to rental units. Absentee landlords and unkempt rental properties are a fact of life in transitional neighborhoods, regardless of how many people live in the homes.

But there is also no question that many of the homes have become routinely overcrowded, and that has exacerbated the decline of some neighborhoods. City and county governments are seeking ways to stop it.

Roswell is the latest community to try— proposing a city ordinance that would allow no more than three unrelated people to live together in a single-family home. (Cobb and Gwinnett counties and the city of Atlanta are attempting to deal with the overcrowding issue by requiring at least 50 square feet of living space per person.)

Yet to suggest that something needs to be done invites criticism that such concerns are badly motivated, even racist. "Latinos — the flavor of the month," is how one advocate dismissed the idea, suggesting that immigrants are being unfairly targeted when such rules are proposed.

We've been through this before. We should have learned.

The urban shantytowns of a century ago — where the immigrant Irish crowded —were filthy, unsafe hell holes that should never have been allowed. Immigrant advocates who reflexively resist legitimate rules and regulations on occupancy are consigning the people they are supposed to represent to living conditions that are, in some cases, worse than those they left in their native land.

On top of that, it is never wise to ignore the deterioration of our older neighborhoods, regardless of who lives in them.

• Mike King is a member of the editorial board. His column runs Thursdays.