State can't do much about illegal immigration

Report also suggests that cities' economies hurt, Tenn.'s helped

BY TRAVIS LOLLER, KnoxNews.com
August 11, 2007

NASHVILLE — Tennessee can do little to curb illegal immigration and its costs beyond urging the federal government to enforce its laws and fund the programs it requires state and local governments to provide, according to a new report from the state comptroller’s office.

The study also concludes that illegal immigrants probably have an overall positive effect on the state’s economy, though they may have a negative impact on local economies in the cities where they are heavily concentrated.

The study comes on the heels of numerous General Assembly efforts over the past two years to fight illegal immigration.

Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, R-Collierville, said the report does not say anything lawmakers didn’t already know, but he objected to the way it downplayed the problems of illegal immigration. He drafted legislation that passed last session authorizing the Highway Patrol to receive training in federal immigration law.

“(The report) continues to dumb down the importance of citizenship in this country,” he said.

While his office does many of its studies at the request of lawmakers, Comptroller John Morgan was the one who decided his office needed to research immigration.

“Complete and accurate information appears to be missing from many discussions of these issues,” the report states.

Illegal immigrants make up an estimated 2 percent of the state’s 6 million residents and comprise about 30 percent of the foreign-born population nationwide. The number of foreign-born residents in Tennessee was about 223,118 as of 2005, with the majority concentrated in Nashville and Memphis.

The report does not provide an estimate of the overall impact of illegal immigrants on Tennessee’s economy but instead relies on studies completed in other states, including a December 2006 report by the Texas comptroller’s office that found “unauthorized aliens generated more taxes and other revenue than the state spends on them.”

The focus of the report was on state government’s costs and revenues, but it acknowledged that for local governments, costs exceeded revenues for illegal immigrants.

Texas has a tax structure similar to Tennessee’s, with a heavy reliance on consumption taxes, such as the sales tax. While illegal immigrants pay these taxes, they are ineligible for almost all public benefits, such as Tenn-Care, food stamps, welfare and public housing, the report states.

However, they are eligible for some services, the costliest being the elementary and secondary education required by federal law. The exact costs of educating illegal immigrant children in Tennessee are unknown, but in 2006 there were 26,707 English language learners in state schools, about 3 percent of total students. English language learners, or ELL students, include illegal immigrants as well as children who are legal immigrants, refugees and U.S. citizens.

This year, Tennessee paid $19 million and local governments paid $13 million to support ELL students. That cost is expected to increase because the General Assembly is requiring more teachers and translators for these students.

State and local governments also incur part of the cost of emergency health care, which hospitals are required to provide by federal law, to illegal immigrants.

There are no statewide estimates of this cost, but a spokesman for Vanderbilt University Medical Center testified at a federal hearing last year that its costs for unreimbursed care to illegal immigrants were about $2.8 million, or about 5 percent of its total costs for uncompensated care that year. The state covers some of these costs, while hospitals pick up the remainder.

Incarceration of inmates who are in the country illegally represents another cost. The report estimates that they made up less than 1 percent of the Department of Correction’s incarcerated felons last year and may have cost the state around $3 million. The federal government reimburses some of those costs.

Despite the costs of illegal immigration, the overall economic impact on the state is probably positive because both legal and illegal immigrants fill a demand for labor, the report concludes.

Consumers can benefit from the lower prices based on immigrant labor, and immigrants boost the overall economy of the state by buying food, housing, transportation and consumer goods, the study says.

Whether illegal immigrants take jobs from native residents and lower wages is an unsettled question, according to the report.

Sen. Dewayne Bunch, R-Cleveland — who co-sponsored several bills including one that would add a 25 percent privilege tax on the purchase of money orders by non-U.S. citizens — said he had not yet seen the report, but he agreed with the idea that there was little the state could actually do when it came to immigration.

Bunch said he didn’t draft any of the bills he co-sponsored but signed them at the request of House colleagues. Asked whether debating unenforceable laws slowed the legislative works, he said, “We spend a lot of time debating bills we can’t do anything about, unfortunately.”

Rep. Donna Rowland, R-Murfreesboro, who has been a vocal critic of illegal immigration, said the idea that states are powerless to deal with illegal immigration because it is a federal issue is an excuse to do nothing.

Rowland cited legislation last year that ended the ability of illegal immigrants to obtain state driver’s licenses as something within the General Assembly’s power.

“We’re responsible for protecting the borders of Tennessee, and we have to do everything in our power to do so,” she said.