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Old 11-30-2010, 03:39 PM
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Default Illegal immigration costs?

Illegal immigration costs?
GOP summit presenter says it carries a $1.5 billion price tag for state
Gene Davis, DDN Staff Writer
Illegal immigration is annually costing Colorado approximately $1.5 billion and must be seriously addressed, according to a featured presenter at yesterday’s “Republican Study Committee of Colorado” summit.
However, some immigration reform activists and Democrats believe that estimate is wildly inaccurate and painted the overall summit as a “snake oil show.”
The “Republican Study Committee of Colorado” held its summit on immigration policy for more than six hours at the capitol. During the summit, Jack Martin of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) argued that a majority of the costs associated with illegal immigration comes from the children of illegal immigrants. FAIR included in its assessment both those children who illegally immigrated with their parents and those who were born in the U.S. and were technically U.S. citizens.
Approximately 55 percent of that estimated $1.5 billion price tag came from educating the children of illegal immigrants, while about $161.9 million was the result of limited English proficiency programs, according to Martin.
The estimate was based on the assumption that there are 270,000 illegal immigrants in Colorado. The estimate of 270,000 illegal immigrants in Colorado is higher than several other research studies and the last figures put out by the federal government.
But Martin believes the other studies undercounted the number of illegal immigrants because they in part didn’t take into account illegal immigrants who were in the country for under a year, disregarded Chinese illegal immigrants, and relied on people identifying themselves as illegal immigrants. He also believes the children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants should be included in the estimate since they likely wouldn’t be in the state if there parents weren’t here.
“In effect, it is a reasonable estimate of the cost of illegal immigration to include those expenditures for the U.S. born children,” he said.
Meanwhile, Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition blasted yesterday’s summit as too extreme and out of touch with Colorado voters. Director Julie Gonzales said the Republican lawmakers who attended the summit were “being taken by a ride” by people with radical beliefs.
“It is disappointing to now see Colorado state legislators fall for this snake oil show,” said a statement from Gonzales. “We elect our leaders to take us in the right direction, and we expect them to use the best information available to them to make good decisions.”
Martin went on to argue that illegal immigrants are not having the positive impact on the U.S. economy that some activists argue. He pointed to a 2008 study that said people in Colorado Ń likely a large number of which were illegal immigrants Ń were sending around $500 million a year back to Latin American countries. He added that illegal immigrants tend to “depress wages and working conditions for American workers.”
Sen. Dave Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs, one of the panel members at yesterday’s committee hearing, agreed with Martin’s assessment.
“They’re sending out money that we can never get back to better our own economy,” he said.
Meanwhile, Rep.-elect Sal Pace, D-Pueblo, argued that lawmakers should only support “cost-effective and constitutional solutions that legitimately reflect the values of our great state.” He urged for a bipartisan solution that avoided extremism.
“While Democrats are focusing on putting people back to work, these extremists are politicizing immigration for personal gain,” he said in a statement.

Going forward
Martin argued that there is no overnight fix to help recoup the $1.5 billion that he believes illegal immigration is costing Colorado. The state must take measures to dissuade illegal immigrants from coming to Colorado and get those illegal immigrants already in Colorado to move to another state or back to their home countries, he said.
Martin and other presenters yesterday touted the Secure Communities Program and E-Verify as measures that could help decrease the number of illegal immigrants in Colorado. The Secure Communities initiative would crack down on illegal immigrants by fingerprinting all inmates and then using that information to verify their residential status, while E-Verify would require businesses to use a federal database to verify the legal residential status of new hires.
Gov. Bill Ritter has declined to enroll Colorado for Secure Communities unless it can be proven that the program is working. A Senate committee last legislative session killed a bill that would have required all businesses to use E-Verify.
Yesterday’s meeting was the second of three summits that Colorado Republicans are holding prior to the start of the legislative session.

http://www.thedenverdailynews.com/article.php?aID=10848
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