Posted on 11/02/2002 10:44:05 AM PST by Sweet_Sunflower29
Arizona taxpayers may be stuck next year with paying the full tab of jailing thousands of illegal immigrants convicted of crimes.
Members of Congress left town last month to campaign for Tuesday's elections without reaching an agreement with the Bush administration on funding a Justice Department program that provided $546 million last year to states.
All 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, including Guam, have shared in the federal dollars distributed through the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program since 1995.
Arizona, California, New York, Texas and New Jersey got the bulk of the federal money.
California received $220 million, about 40 percent of the total. Arizona got more than $24 million.
Congress and the administration are far apart on a compromise. The administration wants to kill the program. Lawmakers want the funding increased to $750 million for fiscal 2003, which began Oct. 1.
Lawmakers, especially those from border states, have long argued that it is the federal government's responsibility to reimburse states because it is charged with securing the nation's borders.
"When the federal government falls short in its efforts to control illegal immigration, it must bear the responsibility for the financial and human consequences of this failure," said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.
But Bush administration officials argue that the program is not directly related to fighting crime and doesn't "advance the core mission of the Justice Department."
Kyl and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who are leading the Senate fight to increase funding, said states are spending $1.6 billion to keep criminal illegal immigrants behind bars.
What frustrates lawmakers most is that state and local governments are not being reimbursed enough to cover the full cost of incarcerating illegal immigrants.
Justice officials estimate localities receive an average of 40 cents for every dollar spent.
In border communities such as El Paso and in Arizona, the disparity is worse. El Paso gets back an average of 10 cents on the dollar, while Arizona averages about 33 cents, according to local officials.
The sharp rise in illegal immigrants nationwide who are jailed for committing crimes has prompted more states and localities to ask for federal money.
More than 400 state or local governments nationwide filed claims last year, up from 10 in 1995, according to the Justice Department.
A recent report by the Justice Department's inspector general's office won't help either side in the debate.
It found that 30 percent of those jailed in county facilities in southern Florida and Fresno, Calif., were legal, not illegal, immigrants.
The same report, however, faulted Immigration and Naturalization Service officials for failing to keep track of foreign-born inmates.
"As a result, many foreign-born inmates who are deportable aliens pass through county facilities virtually undetected," the report concluded.
Earlier this month, the program got a strong endorsement from Congress when lawmakers approved legislation to keep the illegal immigrant assistance program operating through the next two years. But the legislation did not allocate funding, which must be approved in a separate spending bill.
That won't happen until next month when Congress returns for a lame duck session to finish work on 11 of 13 remaining spending bills that keep the government in business.
Much of the government has been operating under a stopgap spending bill, which expires Nov. 22.
I had a lady in the SSI Office tell me that at different times I've had four other people using my SSI number.
It wasn't liberal judges' fault that Los Angeles politicians handcuffed the LAPD with Special Order 40 - a decree not to cooperate with the INS in most all cases.
Let the sheeple of Kalifornia themselves pay for the crazy liberal schemes their elected local politicians enact. Only then will they demand a crackdown on illegals by local police.
But we're just part of one big government entity. People just move from area to another. If they want to crash jets into our buildings, then we should try to understand them. If they repeatedly break our immigration laws, and they want to hunt us down as snipers with their boy lovers, then that is just a lifestyle choice.
Could a program such as this eventually fall under the Homeland Security bill? I'm still interested in Colin Powell's cryptic referral to the immigration problem and the passing of the Homeland Security...
I'm more interested in the amount of money illegals add to citizen's healthcare premiums. If anyone has any stats on that, please let me know.
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