Free Republic

The bills aren't all in yet, but the costs of dealing with illegal immigration are running more than three times the emergency $1.5 million Gov. Janet Napolitano has agreed to send to Southern Arizona, officials of four border counties said Friday. Expect at least a $5 million tab over the next six months to a year for law enforcement, accident response, trash cleanup, health care and autopsy cases involving illegal immigrants, say officials of Pima, Cochise, Santa Cruz and Yuma counties. Pima County expects to spend $2 million in illegal immigrant-related matters in the next six months. Yuma County says...

The number of immigrants without health insurance has soared, accounting for most of the growth in the nation's uninsured population, a new study finds. Immigrants are much more likely than native-born Americans not to have health coverage, accounting for 86 percent of the increase in the uninsured population in the five years ended in 2003, according to research by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. The report, released Monday, finds that the increase is partly due to a 1996 federal law banning legal immigrants' participation in public insurance programs for five years after arrival in the U.S. Those restrictions have since...