OK, Study Illegal Aliens--But It Borders on the Bizarre

Raoul Silva learned the immigration business, he says, while working several years ago as an aide to Orange County Congressman Bob Dornan. Now a consultant at the Immigration and Amnesty Center in downtown Santa Ana, Silva can only sit and wonder what county government has up its sleeve when it says it wants to study the impact that illegal immigrants have on local resources.

“Personally, I don’t feel they’re going to learn anything, and they’re going to waste a lot of our money for a half-baked idea,” Silva said. “I don’t think they’re going to resolve any problems by doing a study. I don’t know what they expect to come out with, as an end result. I think we should have better control of our borders, but that’s not something that’s going to be done by studying people already here.”

If I wasn’t so innately suspicious (hey, it’s my job), I could welcome the county’s study. The truth shall set you free, etc.

But the reality is that unless the Board of Supervisors does some artful salesmanship on the impending study, it’s just going to inflame some already overheated citizens.

It’s not as though studies have never been done on illegal immigration. But for every one that shows how illegal immigrants drain resources, there’s one that shows the opposite.

That’s fine, you argue--let’s just see what the survey shows and go from there.

That’s where the board’s salesmanship comes in. The supervisors must convince people that the study is accurate (and just how do you determine how much illegal immigrants take from the system, compared to how much they contribute?). But beyond that, the board needs to answer a more overriding question: Why do the study in the first place?

Let’s say the survey shows that immigrants are taking much more than they’re giving. Or, that it shows they’re taking just a little more than they’re giving. Or that they’re taking about the same as they’re contributing. Or, what if they’re giving more than they’re getting?

What’s the point?

Initial comments from people supporting the study suggested that the motivation is to show the federal government how serious the problem is. Already, that tells you what results they expect to get.

But do they really think Washington is going to leap to attention when it learns of our local plight? I can just hear a distressed Congress, saying: “Dear me, how can we help?”

“I’d be a fool to say there aren’t people (illegal immigrants) who don’t pay taxes, or that there’s no one who uses social services,” says the director of a liberal-bent national immigration project. “But what you don’t hear about is the number of people who are fearful of availing themselves of services of benefits and remedies to which they’re entitled but still have a lot of taxes withheld automatically.”

Dan Kesseldrenner, who directs the Boston-based National Immigration Project of the National Lawyer’s Guild, says immigration studies reveal a mixed bag. But studying the impact is looking at the problem from the wrong end, he argues.

“The reality is that they’re here, and the question is how we’re going to respond. Rather than have some abstract notion of ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if they weren’t here,’ the reality is they are here, and the way I look at it is things are made worse by treating undocumented people through enforcement techniques. . . . It’s not as if these people would disappear if we spent a whole lot of money on enforcement. What I’m saying is that the notions like building fences or arming the Border Patrol with great weapons aren’t likely to do anything other than undermine people’s civil rights.”

The key, Kesseldrenner said, is to encourage democracy and economic development in Latin America to reduce the incentives to flee to the United States.

While Kesseldrenner acknowledges that he’s looking at the California problem from the opposite coast, Silva sees it from his Santa Ana street corner.

“The 1986 Immigration Reform Act that brought in amnesty was done with the purpose of curtailing the illegal immigration problem,” Silva said. “It didn’t do it. They’re coming across in higher numbers than before, and as long as they have that debt hanging over Mexico and other Central American countries, there is no working capital. They’re coming because they are literally starving to death.”

If the supervisors want to study illegal immigration in Orange County, study away. If it’ll make everyone feel better to put a dollar figure on the problem, have at it.

But as interested as I am in the board trying to identify the problem, I’m much more interested in someone trying to solve it.