ORANGE : U.S. Aid Urged for Immigration Costs

A city immigration panel has recommended a plan for seeking federal money to cover the cost of dealing with legal and illegal immigration throughout the county.

The panel was formed to advise the City Council on immigration issues in October, shortly after federal officials arrested nearly 200 illegal immigrants during a raid in East Orange.

A committee report released Wednesday suggests that cities and county agencies determine which public services are most affected by legal and illegal immigrants, then analyze the cost of providing them public services.

Orange officials hope to collect the data and form a countywide coalition to lobby Congress for reimbursement of local money spent dealing with immigration issues.

“We are trying to take care of a problem that is really a federal problem,” said Councilwoman Joanne Coontz, a member of the panel.

Under the plan, each city will be asked to evaluate how much time its police, community service and code enforcement departments spend dealing with overcrowding, dayworkers and other matters that may involve immigrants.

The county Board of Education will be asked to obtain data on the number of immigrants in each school district; document related weekly changes in enrollment rates, and determine the amount of money spent on bilingual education and food and clothing programs that aid immigrant students.

Other county agencies will be asked to provide data for the last several years on welfare payments, overcrowding and correctional and health-care costs related to immigrants. The county would also be asked to document the number and type of communicable diseases in the immigrant population.

The coalition would then ask Gov. Pete Wilson to gather similar information from every county in the state. In addition, the coalition would request stronger border patrol enforcement; recommend that vehicles crossing U.S. borders be charged a toll to pay for hiring more immigration personnel, and ask congressional representatives to vote to retain sanctions for employers who hire illegal immigrants.

“This is a major undertaking, and we may not be able to accomplish all of it,” Coontz said. “But if we can even draw attention to the issue, we’ll have made some headway.”