Migrant Data Called Flawed

A state report that claims illegal immigrants cost San Diego County $146 million annually in local government services is seriously flawed, two University of California experts on Mexican studies said Tuesday.

*

Leo Chavez, an anthropology professor at UC Irvine, claims that the report “exaggerated the number of undocumented immigrants in the county and underestimated their contributions.” Those two miscalculations fatally flaw the entire study, said Chavez, who is studying the effects of undocumented immigrants on governmental agencies.

“I have some major problems with some of the major premises of the report,” Chavez said. “The whole idea that there are 200,000 undocumented immigrants in San Diego County flies in the face of common sense and academic sense and skews the entire report.”

The report, released earlier this month by the state auditor general’s office, was done too quickly and was too limited in scope to be taken seriously, said Wayne Cornelius, the director of UC San Diego’s U.S.-Mexican Studies Center. It also fails to take into account recent changes in immigration patterns, Cornelius said Tuesday.

The two San Diego State statistics professors who wrote the report defended its accuracy, saying the report shows that the federal government has let state and local governments carry the burden of illegal immigration.

“We feel very comfortable with our results,” said Louis M. Rea, who co-authored the study with Richard A. Parker. “It is obviously very difficult, but we believe we got a representative sample of the immigrant population, particularly in San Diego County.”

Rea and Parker’s 128-page study attempted to assess the impact of an estimated 200,000 immigrants on local services such as schools, health care, welfare and law enforcement throughout the county. Their findings revealed that annual costs to San Diego County totaled more than $206 million--including more than $105 million to the criminal justice system alone--leaving a net burden of $146 million after taxes are subtracted.

Rea said the 200,000 population figure represents 5% of the population of San Diego County, a figure he believes is reasonable, given a degree of accuracy of plus or minus 7%.

“That’s what statisticians do, live with a certain degree of accuracy, or inaccuracy, relative to the sample,” Rea said. “It’s the same process with public opinion polls.”

Cornelius, who has studied effects of Mexican immigration for the past 12 years, also criticized the 200,000 figure, saying census figures would have been more accurate than those from governmental agencies such as the Border Patrol and the INS.

“These agencies usually don’t have proper figures,” Cornelius said.

Rea and Parker created a profile of undocumented immigrants they identified in conjunction with the state’s Economic Development Department. With a budget of $48,000 over the course of 13 months, they surveyed 222 people in various encampments in north and east San Diego County as well as at INS detention centers and shopping malls.

“We became familiar with them by visiting them on a regular basis,” Rea said. “We interviewed as many people as we could. We feel comfortable we got a representative sample.”

Cornelius contended that these represent non-random samples that are bound to introduce bias into the study.

“A study like this is virtually impossible to do given the time period and the small budget the researchers were working with,” Cornelius said. “To do a study like this with any sense of precision, you have to develop a sample that is reasonably representative of the entire population of immigrants, which is terribly difficult to do given the clandestine nature of the population.”

His studies have showed that the immigrant population has changed radically in the past 10 years, something the researchers failed to take into account, Cornelius said. More women and children are entering the country than ever. More urban immigrants, particularly from Mexico City, are also arriving, bringing new skills and backgrounds in addition to different levels of education.

“It is very clear that the more recent population is more diverse and heterogeneous in all kinds of ways,” Cornelius said.

Chavez and Cornelius called the problems with the report unfortunate because they undermine a conclusion both Chavez and Cornelius agree with: The federal government is failing to help with the burden of the immigrants.

The report was released Aug. 5 at a Sacramento hearing of the state Senate Special Committee on Border Issues, which is chaired by Sen. William Craven (R-Oceanside). Craven has called for more federal aid for his area to offset the strain of the influx of immigrants.