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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Friday, January 11, 2002

The Costs of Illegal Immigration
By
Senator Jon Kyl

When we think of illegal immigration, we tend to center our attention on the illegal aliens themselves - how they cross the border, the dangers they face, whether or not they should be granted amnesty or guest-worker status. This is only natural, since all of us tend to focus on complex issues from the human angle.

But there are other aspects of a vast problem like illegal immigration. Not much attention is paid to the tremendous costs of mandates imposed on states and local governments that must provide care to a swelling number of non-citizens within their borders. Yet those costs ultimately take a human toll, too. Every tax dollar spent on emergency care or criminal justice for an illegal immigrant has to be paid for by American taxpayers.

An Arizona mother about to deliver may face clogged emergency rooms and longer wait times than she otherwise would because of the tremendous burdens imposed by illegal aliens receiving federally-mandated emergency care. And, as columnist Michelle Malkin recently pointed out, while public funds are being used to provide care to illegal aliens, "indigent senior citizens - American citizens - must abide by stricter limits, fewer choices, and rising prices ... under their government health-care coverage."

We are a generous people, but more and more my constituents are saying this is unfair.

According to one estimate, the cost of providing federally-mandated health care to illegal immigrants is between $1.5 billion and $2 billion annually. Lawmakers still lack an accurate assessment of the actual cost to border states, which is why I requested a study of those costs to be completed this spring.

The citizens of the four border states pay a disproportionate share of these costs. The federal government is now helping to pay part of the cost, but not enough. In 1996, for example, I successfully attached amendments to the 1996 Immigration Reform Act that required that states, localities and hospitals be reimbursed by the federal government for costs to provide emergency medical treatment to illegal immigrants as well as the costs associated with providing emergency medical transport to illegal aliens injured while attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

For five years Congress reimbursed the states $25 million a year, but this funding will not be reauthorized after 2001. And so, joined by a bipartisan group of border-state Senators, I have introduced legislation to provide $200 million per year in reimbursements to border states, providing reimbursement not only to the states and localities themselves, but also hospitals, doctors, and other providers. As a modest start in that effort, Congress last month agreed to my request for $800,000 in additional health-care reimbursement to the four Arizona border counties, Pima, Yuma, Cochise, and Santa Cruz.

Much more needs to be done.

In addition to addressing health-care costs, I asked Congress to authorize a study to ascertain the criminal justice costs to localities of illegal aliens. That study was completed in 2001, and found that, in 28 southwest border counties of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, the cost of processing illegal immigrants who commit crimes through local criminal justice systems is $125 million annually. While we were able to secure $7 million last year for southern Arizona counties for processing criminal illegal immigrants, it is obviously only a drop in the bucket.

We need a more commonsense approach to dealing with costs and problems of illegal immigration. A compassionate people must act to help those in need, but the needs of American citizens and taxpayers must also be considered.