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The
70 percent solution
Virginians
look to local government for solid data on issues
like illegal immigration. But there is no evidence
supporting Chesterfield County's estimate that
seven of 10 Hispanics in the county are there
illegally.
The
devil is certainly in the details. One week ago, I
wrote an opinion piece, questioning the figures
used in a report by Chesterfield County trying to
justify a claim that the county spent more than
$2.1 million annually on illegal aliens. The
report is a run-up to a hearing Nov. 14 on illegal
immigration and whether the county should crack
down. Curiously, the report gave no estimate of
how many illegal aliens are actually in
Chesterfield – the sine qua non for
estimating costs on county services.
The
report bugged me and a lot of others. Not only did
my column generate more than four dozen responses,
I got a call from Deputy County Administrator
Rebecca Dickson (whose name I had badly
misspelled). The county had directed me to her for
more detailed explanation of where data in the
Aug. 16 report by County Administrator James J.L.
Steigmaier came from. I had tried and failed to
reach Ms. Dickson, who now wanted to set me
straight.
Before
getting into specifics, let me say that Ms.
Dickson is obviously a public servant trying to do
a tough job fairly. She impressed upon me that the
county staff is well aware of how racially loaded
the issue of illegal immigration is. Counties
such as Prince William have adopted strident anti
“illegal” measures, but the Chesterfield Board
of Supervisors (just shaken up in elections)
hasn’t done anything yet.
After
reviewing her explanation and tapping other
sources, nonetheless, I have come to a few
conclusions. First, Chesterfield’s figures are
too suspect to justify any kind of crackdown at
all. The grand harrumph about illegals is based on
bad data, guesses and lots of anecdotes. The more
I studied the Chesterfield report and did my own
research, I came up with figures and views
completely opposite or certainly nowhere as
profound.
But
that doesn’t solve the massive problems in
Stegmaier’s report. For starters, officials in
Chesterfield, population about 300,000, estimate
that from 17,500 to 21,000 illegal aliens – all
of them Hispanics -- live in the county. This
revelation came during an interview with Dickson
and has never been made public, perhaps because
the estimate is so flimsy.
The
number is important because it is the basis of the
$2.1 million cost estimate of the County’s total
budget of $336 million. Ms. Dickson says that the
cost numbers hold despite the uncertainty as to
the total numbers of illegal aliens. To me, that
defies logic.
In
coming up with its alien guess, the County looked
only at Hispanics and no other immigrant group.
(Racial profiling, anyone?) The latest 2000 U.S.
Census reported that 15,000 county residents
checked the box “Hispanic” beside their names.
Mind you, these people could be here legally or
illegally. All they did was check a box on a
chart. To this, Chesterfield officials add another
10,000 to 15,000 Hispanics. This was the
brainchild of a “Hispanic cross functional
team” that worked in the county two or three
years ago, Dickson says. So, we are up to levels
of 25,000 to 30,000 of Hispanics who are in the
county legally or illegally, by the County’s
count.
How
do we know how many are here illegally? In
Chesterfield, we guess and we come up with a
whopping 70 percent, equating to about 17,500 to
20,000 illegals in all. Why 70 percent?
According to Ms. Dickson: “Essentially this
(aforementioned) team, indicated that anecdotally,
they believed that about 70 percent of the
Hispanic population was here illegally. That is
how we got 70 percent.” The County did a second
estimate based on massaging census figures another
way and got a lower illegal population of 13,150.
“Ridiculous”
is the reaction of Communication Director Jesus
Moreno of the Falls Church-based advocacy group,
The Hispanic Committee of Virginia. Moreno’s
group uses figures from the nationally known Pew
Research outfit, which estimates that of the 40
million Hispanics in the U.S., from 10 to 11
million are undocumented. If that ratio is common
everywhere, then Chesterfield’s population of
illegal Hispanics, assuming the totals are
correct, is more like 4,000, or about one fifth of
Chesterfield’s guess. Says Moreno: “I guess
they knocked on the doors of 10 Hispanics and
figured that seven people were illegal.”
To
back the county’s methodology, Ms. Dickson
directed me to a report by the Joint Legislative
Audit and Review Commission, which does studies
for the General Assembly. In 2004, JLARC published
a report on how “foreign-born” Virginians were
faring. “Foreign born” could mean illegal but
also could mean naturalized U.S. citizens or
ones here with proper documents.
When
I checked the report, I couldn’t find much to
back Chesterfield’s estimates. In fact, I found
just the opposite.
While
the number of foreign-born residents increased
statewide 83 percent from 1990 to 2000, the total
amounted to about 570,279 or a small fraction of
the total state population. Most, 41.3 percent,
were from Asia with 33.3 percent from Latin
America. This is interesting because Chesterfield
chose only to study Hispanics, not Koreans,
Indians, or Chinese for potential illegal status.
And, the JLARC report cited only about 13,523
“foreign born” – legal or illegal of all
backgrounds -- residents in Chesterfield, which is
hard to square with Dickson’s numbers. Even the
county’s illegal Hispanic figures are way higher
than these. However, from 1990 to 2000,
Chesterfield’s “foreign-born” population did
double.
To
be sure, I called Phil Leone, executive director
of JLARC. His group’s 2004 report could not find
much negative impact from foreign born Virginians
and noted that the report didn’t specifically
look at illegals. “There wasn’t a great demand
on services,” he said. Rather, he said, “the
foreign born contribute immensely to the state
economy.” Told of Chesterfield’s estimates of
illegal Hispanics, he said, “They didn’t get
that from our report. They may have read our
report and made their own assumptions.”
Indeed,
assumptions are not facts, but they sure play a
role in politics. The illegal alien invasion has
been an ugly rallying cry by state Republicans as
they tried to make up for various failings in the
Nov. 6 election. They were only partly successful,
losing the Senate to the Democrats. In Northern
Virginia, a key battleground, the GOP’s tactic
may have worked in outer suburbs of Loudoun and
Prince William, but failed in the inner suburbs of
Arlington and Fairfax, which are much more diverse
and have larger immigrant populations, The
Washington Post notes.
Chesterfield
is an outer, Republican suburb like Loudoun where
many residents in the white majority are not used
to diversity. Some are quick to scream
“illegal” when confronted with non-English
speaking, dark-skinned people.
Unfortunately,
come the Nov. 14 hearing, many will probably vent
their fears and their ignorance as they have been
primed to do by their local GOP leaders. Fanning
the flames will be Chesterfield’s badly flawed
report. No doubt it will be cited as the Gospel
truth by other Virginia localities as they form
vigilante squads to fight the supposed alien
invasion.
--
November 12, 2007
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