Immigration--left to the states: with so many states seeing increases in immigrants, the issue of how to deal with them has fallen at the feet of state lawmakers.

In Nebraska, where the percentage of foreign-born residents, mostly from Mexico, has more than tripled in the last decade, Senator Ray Aguilar thinks he may have a solution to the challenges that come with a growing immigrant population.

"It became apparent to me sometime ago that when there are new populations in your state and you do what you can to help them become productive members of the community," says Aguilar, "you also end up doing everyone else in the community a favor."

To that end Aguilar this year supported successful legislation allowing for the children of immigrants to attend Nebraska's universities at in-state tuition costs on the theory that "if you fail to make educational opportunities available to the ones who are coming up, you pretty much are relegating them to a lifetime of manual labor and greatly limiting their upward mobility, which would not only be bad for them, but bad for Nebraska."

Now Aguilar is proposing a bill calling for the creation of a driver's certificate that will legally permit recent as well as unauthorized workers to get behind the wheel.

"As long as I have been in the legislature I have heard from constituents who are complaining about the high rate of auto insurance and how immigrant workers in particular are driving those rates up for everyone else," says Aguilar, adding that only by making such drivers legal will they be able to get insurance for themselves and keep the overall rates low.

MORE IMMIGRANTS IN MORE STATES

Aguilar's southeastern Nebraska district is overwhelmingly white, rural and aging. That he should be concerned about immigration matters reflects a demographic reality that is being replicated in disparate regions across the country where foreign-born populations are on the rise.

In southeastern Nebraska, immigrants have come to work in the region's thriving turkey, beef and pork processing plants. In other places, the hospitality and construction industries are the main suppliers of jobs, sometimes paying wages in hard cash to workers from Mexico and a handful of Central American countries who say they would only receive a fraction of such pay back home.

"This is increasingly the story almost everywhere in the country today," says Randy Capps, a senior research associate with the Urban Institute, who studies immigrant trends and public policy.

"It used to be just a handful of states, such as California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey, that absorbed the greatest number of immigrants," Capps says. "But now it is truly nationwide."

Capps says many different states "are seeing sometimes dramatic rates of increases in their immigrant populations." Helping them and their children "integrate into the larger society and economy has become an issue for the states in a way that it never has been before."

Immigration has become a state issue for another reason, says Arizona Senator Jake Flake, whose south central district is some 200 desert miles north of the Mexican border. "The federal government has abandoned its responsibility with regards to immigration policy, giving us at the state level no choice but to have to deal with the issue, even if we don't want to," he says.

And that feeling, says John Keely, the director of communications with the Center for Immigration Studies, is shared by state lawmakers everywhere, "because they know that Washington has essentially punted all immigration issues back to the states.

"It is not an area that they want to get into, but because the federal government has failed to put together a comprehensive approach to immigration, the states really have no choice," says Keely. He predicts that there are going to be "more solutions at the state level on this issue than we have ever seen before."

STATE ACTION

More than 550 bills relating to immigration were introduced in state legislatures this year, with nearly 30 states passing more than 75 new laws on everything from identification requirements, access to social services and workforce regulation.

Most of the legislation, says Michael Fix, the vice-president for the Migration Policy Institute, has targeted the estimated 1.2 million illegal immigrants who currently reside in the United States. A preponderance of state measures focused on enforcement measures.

Arizona passed legislation requiring U.S. citizenship or legal immigrant status for anyone receiving public health services. The Georgia legislature approved a phased-in program requiring all contractors doing business with the state or a local government to verify the citizenship status of their workers. Oklahoma lawmakers voted to deny unemployment benefits to all unauthorized workers.

In a special session in July, Colorado lawmakers also voted to require proof of citizenship for anyone taking part in such programs as Medicaid, Medicare and the state's unemployment insurance. (See story on page 18.)

But some of the legislation has been described as "pro-immigrant." Nebraska lawmakers not only voted to accept in-state college tuition for the children of unauthorized workers, but did so over the veto of Governor Dave Heineman.

Maryland lawmakers voted to make health care services available for the children of some immigrants as well as pregnant illegal immigrant women. And the Rhode Island legislature voted to allow the children of unauthorized workers to continue to participate in a state-sponsored health care program, provided they are enrolled no later than the end of this year.

The main thrust of the Rhode Island legislation was aimed at prohibiting additional children of illegal immigrants from joining the state's health care program after the beginning of the new year, however.

"There is only so much that we can do at the state level," says Representative Joe Hackney of North Carolina, a state that has grown by more than 200,000 new immigrants in just the last five years.

"You have to think about the costs that are going to be associated with absorbing so many new people, and whether your state is up to it," says Hackney. "But at the same time, that doesn't mean that anyone is going to turn folks away from our educational system because they are the children of an undocumented worker, or deny anyone medical care if they need it. Those are not the areas we are going to go."

THE BENEFITS

Instead, says Representative Joseph E. Miro of Delaware, lawmakers are increasingly thinking about the benefits that come with immigration and wondering how the system can provide needed services for the more than 1.1 million people who come to the United States legally every year.

"So much attention has been paid to the undocumented, and they are a problem," says Miro. "But there are also many others who play by the rules, pay taxes with the consumables they purchase and open up Mom 'n' Pop grocery stores and other businesses in the neighborhoods they move into.

"That part of the immigration story is in every way a positive thing, largely because they contribute so much to the economy," Miro says.

One of those contributions comes in the form of tax revenue. According to a study released this spring by the Migration Policy Institute, immigrant households in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area paid more than $9.8 billion in taxes between 1999 and 2000, a figure that the report says represented 18 percent of the taxes paid by all D.C.-area residents during that same period.

"We have had the same results in the past when we focused on New York and Illinois," says the MPI's Fix, one of the authors of the study. "But what is clear is that immigrants pay a proportionate share in taxes, the same amount of taxes that they represent in the total population," he says.

Conversely, the costs associated with immigrants may be overstated, according to Katherine Fennelly, a professor of public affairs at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

"There are certain assumptions about costs that prompt many people to conclude that because an immigrant may use some sort of public service that this means other taxpayers will end up supporting them," says Fennelly, who teaches a class on immigration and public policy.

This is particularly a concern in health care. "Undoubtedly in some areas with large numbers of uninsured immigrants, the system can be stressed," Fennelly says. "But a more in-depth look also reveals that immigrants actually tend to be healthier than the average U.S.-born citizen with lower morbidity rates, in spite of being poor."

According to a report by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, "The Health of Immigrants in New York City," foreign-born New Yorkers are "in general less likely than U.S.-born New Yorkers to smoke, be obese, be diagnosed with HIV infection or binge drink. They also have a lower infant mortality rate."

At the same time, a report published last year tabulating the health spending for some 21,000 people in 1998, (the most recent year for which the figures were available), concluded that immigrants on average received roughly half the health care services that native-born Americans did.

This report, "Health Care Expenditures of Immigrants in the United States," appeared in the August 2005 edition of the American Journal of Public Health and said that immigrants received, on average, the equivalent of $1,139 in health care services in a given year compared with $2,564 for the American-born.

But others point out that additional costs associated with immigrant health care have to include hiring bilingual hospital staffs and the fact that more immigrants than native-born Americans are uninsured.

"After a while you see that a lot of these things are tantamount to unfunded mandates that could end up bankrupting the states," says Keely.

"There are many additional costs related to public services caused by too-lenient immigration policies that the states are going to end up paying for," says Keely. "And those costs will just grow as the number of immigrants increases."

Capps of the Urban Institute acknowledges that costs associated with health care and education services in some areas of the country can be significant. "But many of these services have to be regarded as investments in that they are maintaining the health of a population or increasing its wage potential," he says.

Researchers who study populations with the greatest health care needs have also noted that the needs vary greatly depending upon the age of the recipient. A report released by the National Research Council in 1997, "The New Americans: Economic, Demographic and Fiscal Effects," concluded that immigrants, "like most Americans," tend to use a greater amount of publicly funded services "in childhood and old age, but they make positive contributions as working adults."

THE EDUCATION PIECE

Representative Miro, a former public school teacher, says the same theory of making services available early for a later gain can be applied to education, which he says "undoubtedly improves the fortunes of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. labor market and contributes to their upward mobility the way it does for any immigrant group in our country."

And the longer Mexican immigrants study in U.S. schools, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the better they do. An NCES report, "Dropout Rates in the United States, 2000," shows that the high school drop-out rate stands at 27 percent for first-generation Mexican-Americans, a number that precipitously falls to 8.6 percent for those in the third generation.

"It is really a matter of just getting used to the education system here and understanding that completing high school or even going on to college is a good thing," Miro says. He recalls meeting Mexican immigrant parents who "had never entered a school before and did not know how to read or write."

"Once they realized that getting an education could improve the lives of their children, they were very supportive," he says.

According to the NCES, more than 5 percent of all school-aged children as of 2000 were born in other countries. But that percentage varied greatly depending upon the location.

"Our overall immigrant population in this area is at about 7 percent now," reports Nebraska's Aguilar. "But the schools here say it is higher for them. With at least three children on average per immigrant household, the average is more like 20 percent."

In some Midwestern rural communities, immigrant students have helped reverse a decline at the elementary and high school level that started at the height of the baby boom in the early and mid-1960s.

"There is probably only one thing that a superintendent of a school district dislikes more than having to hire more teachers to teach English as a second language, and that is having to close a school because there just aren't enough students," says Fennelly, who has studied the enrollment levels of the immigrant children of parents working in the meat-packing plants of southern Minnesota.

Because funding for public elementary and secondary schools is still primarily supported by the states--in 2002, the nation's schools received more than $207 billion in state money compared to $32 billion from Washington, according to the NCES the costs from increased enrollments will largely be borne by states.

Some budget experts point to California, which for decades has had the largest number of foreign-born residents in the nation, a number that today comprises more than 12 percent of its total population.

"I think that some time ago the state leadership here decided they were just going to have to provide a certain level of services for the immigrant populations, and that was it," says Jean Ross, the executive director of the California Budget Project.

"Because immigration was an issue here years before it became one in most of the other states, the debate has moved on to a different level," she says. "It is no longer a matter of whether or not the state should provide certain services to its immigrant population, but how much and what kind."

Pointing to the last significant immigration wave 100 years ago, which saw more than 7.5 million people from other countries arrive in the United States, Miro says the states are in a "tough position where they may not have money for all the needed services.

"But if we want to continue to benefit from the work that the immigrants provide, it seems to me that we are going to have to assume certain responsibilities."

Garry Boulard, a frequent contributor to State Legislatures, is a freelance writer in Albuquerque, N.M.

States with the Largest Growth of Immigrants

(in thousands)

State            Immigrant Pop.   Immigrant Pop.   Growth    Percent
                      2005             2000                 Increase

California            9,984            9,053         931      10.3%
Texas                 3,379            2,591         788      30.4
Georgia                 762              378         384     101.5
New Jersey            1,620            1,281         339      26.5
Maryland                725              479         246      51.3
North Carolina          590              373         217      58.1
Washington              650              457         193      42.2
Pennsylvania            534              364         170      46.7
Virginia                719              552         167      30.3
Arizona                 851              692         159      23.0
Tennessee               264              110         154     140.0
Minnesota               374              261         113      43.3
Nevada                  408              333          75      22.5
New Mexico              177              107          70      65.1
South Carolina          116               65          51      78.5
Mississippi              72               29          43     148.7
Rhode Island            126               87          40      45.5
Delaware                 67               38          29      77.5
Alaska                   48               28          20      72.3
South Dakota             18               10           8      80.0
Wyoming                  10                5           5     100.0
Nation               35,156           29,987       5,169      17.2

Source: Center for Immigration Studies analysis of March 2005 Current
Population survey.

States With the Most Illegal Immigrants

(in thousands)

The annual average increase in illegal immigrants from 2000 to 2005 was
greatest in Texas, California and Georgia. The greatest percentage
increase occurred in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina.

State             Illegal Population    Illegal Population    Percent
                         2005                  2000            change

All States              10,500                 8,460             24%
California               2,770                 2,510             10
Texas                    1,360                 1,090             25
Florida                    850                   800              6
New York                   560                   540              4
Illinois                   520                   440             18
Arizona                    480                   330             45
Georgia                    470                   220            114
New Jersey                 380                   350              9
North Carolina             360                   260             38
Nevada                     240                   170             41

Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security.