Joining the Hispanic-bashing craze, Chesterfield County officials will hold a public hearing Nov. 14 to get public comment on “illegal immigrants” whom county officials claim cost more than $2 million annually in local services.
This expense to local taxpayers is apparently so profound that county officials are considering a variety of punitive measures to stop the barbarians at the gate. Under consideration are requiring Chesterfield business owners to certify that they do not hire illegal immigrants before they can obtain business licenses and zoning strictures to prevent illegals from living chock-a-block in houses or apartments.
The point of the hearing seems to be to provide a venue for public outcry on illegal aliens, whether informed or not, so that county supervisors can proceed with the anti-alien crusade. Chesterfield is predominately white and Republican so it may be no surprise that it is a member of the 20 city and county informal vigilante association designed to blunt to invasion of illegals. It doesn’t matter if the onslaught is real or imagined.
The basis of the Nov. 14 hearing is a report sent to the Board of Supervisors on Aug. 16 by County Administrator James J.L. Stegmaier outlining the cost estimates of the illegal alien burden and what can be done. As a Chesterfield resident and a small business owner (albeit without any employees), I take special interest in the matter. So, I studied Stegmaier’s report, found some holes, and called Don Kapel, the county’s press spokesman. “It is amorphous,” he admitted. “Nobody knows how many illegal immigrants might be here.”
He referred me to Rebecca Dixson, an assistant county administrator who played a key role in assembling the report. I called her about four times and never got called back. So, dear readers please know I tried to get a response from the county, but was unsuccessful.
Let’s get down to brass tacks:
· The report says that, based on 2006 figures, illegal immigrants cost the county about $1.3 million in direct costs plus another $737,000 in indirect costs. “Staff has estimated the potential local cost of providing selected services to those individuals deemed to be in the county illegally. These figures are estimates only, determined by each department using reasonable assumptions,” the report says. I could not get an explanation from the county about what “reasonable assumptions” are.
· The biggest single costs are health ($310,000), but the report provided no explanation of how this figure was obtained. In addition, about $409,000 in expenses supposedly came from poor illegal immigrants who used emergency room services in the county. The county contacted the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services and learned that total indigent emergency room use in the county was $629,500. Although the report admits, “data is not kept on this,” the county, nonetheless, attributed up to 70 percent of the indigent use of emergency care by illegal aliens resulting in the $409,000 figure. This is a “staff” estimate but no information was given on how it is based. Did someone check the patients’ passports and visas or were the patients simply dark-skinned and spoke Spanish?
· Illegal immigrants are apparently bad drivers who don’t pay their fines. Aliens here without documents racked up unpaid fines worth $336,840, the study says. This is based on another “staff estimate” that 31 percent of the total outstanding fines are the result of illegal immigrants. I could not learn where the 31 percent number came from and the report did not say.
· Illegal immigrants were said to be responsible for $230,000 in Local Jail expenses. No explanations were given. However, the jail does get reimbursed for illegals picked up while their documents are reviewed or for deportation by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau, which is the sole government agency that is really tasked with cracking down on illegal aliens. Since 2003, the county has received $145,000 from ICE for this. “Staff estimates that six to 10 illegal aliens are now being picked up monthly” as a result of the joint ICE program, the report says. A couple of points here: Is that a tremendous number given the county’s size of about 300,000? Also, the jail has been stuffed with as many as 400 inmates at any time. Ten aliens isn’t a lot. What’s more if presumably illegal aliens are already in jail, why do we need extra measures like having business owners certify they don’t hire illegals?
So it goes. Dear readers, do you see a major epidemic here? Or do you see a politically-charged report with a lot of squishy “staff estimates?” I tend to see the latter.
The situation reminds me of what life was like in the Communist Soviet Union where I worked as a U.S. news correspondent in the 1980s. In that police state, Soviet citizens were required to carry internal passports at all times and these had the notorious “Line Five” which listed “nationality.” Being “Jewish” or “Uzbek” was considered a nationality but having it so listed meant one was more likely to be refused work or a university position.
The Kremlin had another trick to keep the unwashed from the predominately Slavic (read “white”) and desirable cities such as Moscow or Leningrad. To live legally in those places, one had to have a “propiska” or living permit. It was nearly impossible to get one by yourself. So, there were literally millions of phony marriages set up, whereby, for a covert fee, a couple would marry. Since one of the couple had the desired “propiska,” that meant that the other partner could get one too. When they married, bingo, they divorced, but both kept their desired propiskas.
Of course, Chesterfield County isn’t the Soviet Union, at least not yet. It may be some time before the Board of Supervisors considers internal county passports and living permits. But what is sad is that a lot of emotion will be vented Nov. 14 without much factual basis. And the Chesterfield supervisors likely will proceed with measures that are throwbacks to some ugly parts of Virginia’s history when the color of one’s skin was an obsession.
