EDITORIAL WHERE ARE THE LEADERS? L.A. BEARS THE HEAVY COST FOR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S FAILURE TO ADDRESS IMMIGRATION ISSUES.

THE enormous cost of providing education, medical care and social services has overburdened the resources of local government in the Los Angeles area and across the state for years.

The federal government bears the responsibility for the nation's failed immigration policies and its porous borders, but it doesn't pay much of the bill, not even for locking undocumented criminals up in prison.

A new state audit of Los Angeles County's troubled health care system has put the cost of just nonemergency treatment for the undocumented at $130 million a year. The mere mention of the possibility of denying such care to illegal immigrants has reopened the deeply divisive debate about how to deal with the problem and who should pay the bills.

All across the country, local governments are starting to grapple with similar problems as the undocumented migrate in larger numbers to all regions. The impacts are essentially an unfunded mandate, i.e. federal policy (or lack thereof) that causes an unreimbursed cost locally.

So where is the congressional leadership that should be coming up with a sensible and humane policy of immigration? Doing what it does with so many of our problems: ignoring its responsibilities.

In desperation, and in the absence of national leadership, some local communities are bound to take drastic actions that might be penny-wise but are pound-foolish. Others, like Los Angeles, feel the brunt of their own policies that seek to be humane.

As with so many issues these days, America cries out for real leadership, for action to address illegal immigration. President George W. Bush started down the right path with his calls to expand the guest-worker program, but Congress has been as cool to that as about fixing Social Security.

The problem is politically messy. Lean too far to one side and you're racist; too far to the other and you're selling the country's security short and encouraging illegality and mass immigration.

Yet we elect our leaders to make such tough choices, and that is what they must do now. Otherwise, Los Angeles and other cities and communities will do it themselves in what's sure to be a conflicting hodgepodge of politically motivated policy that doesn't solve the problem, share the burdens or improve the lot of Americans or immigrants.