1992 Cost of Immigrants $18 Billion, Report Says : Finances: Estimate far exceeds that of Gov. Wilson and, unlike his, includes legal newcomers. Immigrant rights advocates attack findings.

A new report certain to inflame the raging debate over immigration asserts that immigrants--legal and illegal--are a multibillion-dollar drain on California taxpayers and take thousands of jobs from U.S. workers.

The findings issued Thursday by controversial economist Donald L. Huddle of Rice University were immediately challenged by immigrant rights activists.

The report was commissioned by a new coalition entering the immigration debate: environmentalists and population-control advocates.

The group, Carrying Capacity Network, has a board of advisers that includes Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist who wrote “The Population Bomb”; former U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.), an adviser to the Wilderness Society, and Edgar Wayburn, vice president of conservation for the Sierra Club.

Carrying Capacity Network has taken no position for or against immigration, but immediately after the report was issued two groups--Californians for Population Stabilization and Population-Environment Balance--cited it as evidence of the need to limit legal immigration.

“California’s population is growing at a rate faster than that of India,” said Ric Oberlink, director of Californians for Population Stabilization. “The state must build a classroom virtually every hour to keep up with this population growth.”

The report concludes that in 1992 alone, the 7.4 million immigrants, legal and illegal, who have settled in California since 1970 cost taxpayers $18 billion more than they paid in taxes.

Huddle’s estimates dwarf the $3 billion a year that Gov. Pete Wilson has said is the cost of providing education, health, welfare and other services to illegal immigrants and their children in California. Huddle estimated that California has 2 million illegal immigrants, who cost taxpayers $5 billion more than they paid in taxes last year.

Wilson has stressed that he is only seeking to curb illegal immigration, and he has repeatedly cited the contributions made by legal immigrants. His office declined Thursday to comment on the Huddle study.

The findings, however, run counter to the conclusions of many studies--by RAND, the Urban Institute and others--that say immigrants generally do not compete with native-born workers for jobs and are only slightly more likely to receive public assistance than non-immigrants. Other studies have concluded that illegal immigrants take jobs that U.S. citizens will not perform, and that they create other jobs by spending money in this country.

“There is not one Hughes aircraft worker whose job was stolen by an undocumented immigrant from Oaxaca,” said Vibiana Andrade, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Assemblyman Richard Polanco, chairman of the Legislature’s Latino Caucus, said Huddle’s study underestimated the taxes paid by immigrants.

“He says that because neither legal nor illegal immigrants pull their weight, we should have a moratorium on immigration,” Polanco said. “Well, children, the disabled and senior citizens can’t always pull their weight. Is Mr. Huddle proposing we get rid of them too? Obviously, this idea is ludicrous.”

Huddle’s earlier studies on immigration also have drawn fire from immigration experts.

Angelo Ancheta, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said: “If you’re simply looking at government outlays versus tax revenues, that’s not a complete picture.” He said studies should include the contributions that immigrants make as consumers, for example.

Huddle acknowledged Thursday that his new report does not include any estimate of Social Security taxes paid by illegal immigrants. Some economists argue that many illegal immigrants have Social Security as well as federal and state income taxes withheld from their pay. Since these workers often do not file tax returns, many do not receive the refunds that legal residents would be entitled to.

“Some may say, ‘You may be getting cheaper tomatoes and strawberries due to illegal immigrants,’ ” Huddle said, “At the same time, we haven’t taken into account a lot of the other costs . . . national defense, highways. . . . The biggest thing that we haven’t taken into account--that probably more than outweighs the benefits--is wage depression.” Huddle insists that immigrants depress wages, thereby forcing working poor people onto public assistance.

In his study, Huddle contends that immigration was responsible for displacing 914,000 Californians last year, costing taxpayers $4.2 billion in unemployment insurance and other government benefits.

The economist also predicted that the cost of providing services such as health care, education and welfare to immigrants and their children will rise in the 1990s unless policies are changed. “We need to decide, ‘How much immigration can we afford?’ ” he said.

One point on which Huddle found agreement with most other studies is that the federal government receives most of the taxes paid by immigrants, even though local government and the state provide the bulk of services, such as education and health care.