COSTS, BENEFITS ASSOCIATED WITH ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.

Byline: Steve Carney and Jesse Hiestand Daily News Staff Writers

Five years after Proposition 187 passed overwhelmingly, the debate over the controversial measure still burns hot, but the problems linked to California's more than 2 million illegal immigrants are the same.

If anything, the problems have worsened, with an estimated 125,000 more illegal immigrants making the often treacherous journey every year. About 150 died in the deserts of Imperial County last year alone.

The arguments are unchanged. And many issues associated with essentially stateless, identityless people are rarely talked about: sweatshops, unlicensed and uninsured drivers, and overcrowded housing, to name a few.

Immigration advocates argue that the newcomers revitalize the economy, reduce labor costs, work at jobs citizens don't want and pay their share of taxes.

Opponents say the immigrants drain public funds needed by citizens and legal immigrants, and drive down wages for legal workers.

Dan Stein, executive director of the Washington-based Federation for American Immigration Reform, said both ends of the political spectrum exploit immigrants: Republicans cater to businesses seeking cheap labor, and Democrats pander to ethnic groups for votes.

``If the costs of illegal immigration were actually assessed on the people causing the problem, the problem would be licked in a minute,'' he said.

``The issue is not whether we can control illegal immigration; it's whether we can control the greedy, exploitative interests that profit from it.''

And every viewpoint has a research group and an academic study to support its position.

``There's a lot of factors. A lot of them are hard to measure,'' said Jeff Passel, a demographer for the Washington-based Urban Institute, a liberal research organization that studies economic and social problems.

He cited an adage among researchers: ``You tell me who did the study, and I can tell you what they found.''

``That's the problem,'' Passel said. ``A lot of these look simply at government costs vs. government revenues. There's a lot of other economic impacts that are hard to sort out.''

Passel co-wrote a study himself in 1994 that said illegal aliens in California pay about $732 million in state and federal taxes. While that's proportionally less than their share, the study also argued that they soon become productive residents - contributing more after 10 years in residence than the average citizen.

Foes of Proposition 187 are nearly united in a belief that the sales and income taxes paid by illegal immigrants offset the state's costs to treat, teach and handle them in the criminal justice system.

``Their contribution is far beyond its cost to society,'' said Mario S. Vazquez, executive director of One Stop Immigration, a legal clinic and school in Boyle Heights.

Beyond taxes, Vazquez points out, California residents enjoy fruits of the immigrant's unusually low-wage toil, from more affordable foods to services.

Eliminating funding for the education of these immigrants and their children as 187 proposed would prove counterproductive, he said.

``They'd be untrainable, unemployed and prone to crime,'' Vazquez said. ``If these people become employable, then in a few years you'll have people who are paying taxes and in a generation they should be able to pay off their education just by paying tax contributions.''

Denying illegal immigrants prenatal and other medical care could also backfire, especially for infants and children, he said.

``Based on the costs of not doing it, you would end up with children who are born with problems that tend to be very costly, and the government tends to get stuck with the bill,'' Vazquez said.

Instead, he suggested the state offer affordable health insurance or affordable pay-per-service medical care that is easily accessible to these people, perhaps by organizing it through day labor centers.

And in terms of law enforcement, Vazquez said those who enter the country illegally and then commit serious crimes find little sympathy among other undocumented aliens.

``The solution of deporting some of them may be one way the government can reduce costs,'' he said.

Perhaps, Vazquez said, illegal immigrants could be put to work on public projects such as fire prevention or reforestation, trading minimum wage and minimum health care coverage for this work.

On the other side of the debate, the Pacific Legal Foundation, whose lawyers represent the co-authors of Proposition 187, say the solution to the staggering cost posed by illegal immigrants is simple: Make the proposition law.

``We would like to see the governor vigorously defend Proposition 187, which is the promise he gave the people of California when he took the oath of office to uphold the laws of the state,'' said Sharon Browne, an attorney with the foundation.

By barring public education to illegals, the state could funnel that estimated $2 billion spent on this toward building new classrooms to relieve overcrowding or increase the amount allocated for each student, she said.

Barring these and other benefits, such as health care, would go a long way to solving the immigration problem.

``By cutting off the benefits to illegal immigrants, we are reducing their incentive to come across the border,'' she said.

If the proposition ultimately fails to become law, there are few options, she said.

``Raise taxes or cut services somewhere else,'' she said. ``If you cut the services elsewhere, you're cutting them for the lawful residents of California.''