Illegal immigrant costs IndianaIndiana panel gets few cost answers on illegal immigration
 INDIANAPOLIS (AP) Lawmakers who want to know how much money illegal immigration is costing public services in Indiana got few answers this summer.
Much of the Interim Committee on Immigration Issues' meeting was focused on trying to quantify the costs that illegal immigrants have on public services such as Medicaid, prisons and schools.
Mitch Roob, secretary of the state's Family and Social Services Administration, said the state has to pay part of the Medicaid costs for pregnancies and emergency medical care for illegal immigrants who can't afford them. That costs the state about $5 million a year, he said.
But officials with the state's child welfare agency and the departments of health, education and correction didn't have precise figures on what illegals are costing them.
The Department of Correction said it had 504 foreign born nationals in state prisons, and it will spend about $9.8 million on them this year.
But Randy Koester, deputy commissioner of administration for the agency, said he did not have a breakdown of how many of those foreign nationals were in the country illegally. He did say that those here illegally must serve out their sentences unless a judge orders differently or federal officials take them into custody.
It was the second of four fact-finding meetings, and a fifth meeting is planned to determine if the panel can reach consensus on recommended legislation for 2009 on an issue that was contentious last session.
The Republican-ruled Senate and Democrat-led House each passed different versions of bills earlier this year that would have punished employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, but they could not reach compromise on a final version.
Washington, D.C.-based Pew Hispanic Center has cited U.S. Census data and models in estimating there are about 100,000 undocumented people living in Indiana, but an official with the group testified last week that the number could be anywhere from 75,000 to 125,000.
Louis Moffa, a professor of civil rights and constitutional law at Rutgers University who has litigated cases involving immigration, said most studies he has seen show that undocumented workers are necessary to the U.S. economy.
He said the only two services they are entitled to are public education and emergency medical care, and in the case of schools, they are footing part of the bill through property taxes. Losing Indiana's undocumented workers could mean a $9 billion loss to the state's economy, he said.
But Republican Sen. Mike Delph of Carmel, who clashed with lobbyists, the business community and some lawmakers last session over his bill that would have punished employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers, said people here illegally were breaking immigration laws the federal government is not enforcing.
``At what point do we have to draw the line in the sand and say we put principle over profit?'' he asked.
Lauren Harvey, assistant director of English Language Learning and Migrant Education at the Indiana Department of Education, said in the 2007-2008 school year, there were nearly 35,000 students taking English as a second language. But because federal law prohibits public schools from asking about the citizenship status of children or their parents, it's not known how many are here illegally.
James Payne, director of the Department of Child Services said that services for abused, neglected or troubled youth have largely been funded through property taxes collected by each of the state's 92 counties.
The state will take over all the costs for those services next year, but under the previous system, the agency did not have sound data on how much of the money was being spent on illegal immigrants, Payne said. He said the state should have a better ability to track that soon.
Brian Carnes, director of legislative affairs for the State Department of Health, said it was impossible to determine how much illegals were costing its agency.
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