Data Sheds Heat, Little Light, on Immigration Debate : Studies: The number of illegal U.S. residents is elusive. Their impact on jobs and public services is hotly disputed.

WASHINGTON —  At a highly publicized hearing by the House Republican Task Force on Illegal Immigration last summer, Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) warned that “our nation is being quietly and systematically overrun by wave upon wave of illegal immigrants.”

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials “privately estimate that there are more than 3 million illegal aliens in Southern California alone,” Gallegly said. He cited a national study that said undocumented immigrants cost taxpayers almost $12 billion a year and a state report that put the cost in California at $3 billion.

The numbers seemed to provide an authoritative foundation for Gallegly’s call for a crackdown. But like many of the figures used in the emotionally charged debate over the impact of illegal immigration, they generate more heat than light.

In reality, nobody can prove precisely how many illegal immigrants live in the United States, much less whether they drain more from public funds as recipients of public services than they contribute in economic activity and tax revenues.

This is more than an arcane debate between people in green eyeshades. The numbers are beginning to influence whether immigrants to the United States find welcome mats or go-home signs.

Anti-immigrant sentiment in California, which is rising in tandem with the state’s unemployment rate, is fed by any evidence the newcomers are taking slices out of the living standards of U.S.-born residents. But the evidence on this score, as on virtually all aspects of immigration, is at best ambiguous.

Gallegly’s reference to 3 million illegal residents in Southern California collides with the official INS estimate of 3.5 million illegal immigrants nationwide. And the studies that Gallegly invoked have been criticized by some economists, demographers and sociologists as overstating the costs of public services attributed to recent immigrants--including education and welfare--and playing down the taxes they pay.

“These estimates are based on a whole bunch of tenuous assumptions,” said Sidney Weintraub, a University of Texas economist. “I don’t think they’re meaningful. They’re not capturing the indirect benefits from people working and contributing to society.”

In Orange County, a report completed earlier this year determined that while illegal immigrants pull services from virtually every county department, little information existed to measure the actual costs.

The report cited federal figures ranking Orange County fourth in the nation as an intended residence for immigrants, and second only to Los Angeles County with 184,000 pending applications for amnesty under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act.

The 57-page analysis, presented to the Board of Supervisors in February, stated repeatedly that insufficient data existed to quantify the county’s direct costs in a host of areas, including health care and court operations.

The only major department that listed a broad cost estimate was the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which estimated incarceration costs for illegal immigrants at $1.5 million to $2.2 million a year.

County officials said that a more precise analysis could cost up to $500,000. Even then, they concluded, “such a study would not add significantly to the understanding that Orange County is indeed negatively impacted financially by illegal immigration.”

Wide Range of Estimates

It is no wonder the numbers are all over the map: Neither the U.S. Census Bureau nor any independent demographic survey asks people their legal status. Indeed, many government programs are explicitly forbidden to make such an inquiry. That has left the door open for an extraordinary range of estimates.

At one end of the spectrum is Donald L. Huddle, an economics professor emeritus at Rice University. Huddle says immigrants impose enormous net costs--including the $12 billion for illegal residents cited by Gallegly.

At the other end is Julian Simon, a professor of business administration at the University of Maryland, who maintains that “immigrants put much more in the public coffers than they take out, especially illegal immigrants,” who are not legally entitled to many public benefits.

Many of the score of immigration specialists interviewed for this story expressed skepticism about both extremes.

On at least one thing the analysts agree: States, counties and localities bear a disproportionate share of illegal immigration’s burden. It is these levels of government that provide undocumented workers with many of the public services they receive, while the federal government collects most of the taxes they pay.

“At the federal level, it appears that immigrants are a fiscal plus,” Princeton University sociologist Thomas Espenshade said. “They pay more in taxes than they use in services. It’s the local governments that are most adversely affected.”

Beyond this, there is little agreement about the bottom line--or even whether it is possible to discern one.

Historically, especially when the U.S. economy has been booming, Americans have welcomed immigrants as being young, healthy and ready to work. Immigrants have pumped money into the economy and been barred by law from receiving many public services, such as welfare and Social Security.

But these are not boom years. Many academics, most prominently UC San Diego economist George Borjas, say recent immigrants on the whole are less educated and have fewer skills than native-born Americans and rely more on public services than their predecessors.

A recent census report found that 1 out of every 4 foreign-born adults had less than a ninth-grade education, compared with less than 1 of every 10 native-born. At the same time, the percentage of foreign-born residents with college degrees matched the percentage of native-born, and more foreign-born than native-born Americans had graduate degrees.

“Is there a threshold at which, overall, the balance of cost and benefits shifts from being a positive to a negative one based on the composition and number of those immigrants?” asked Georges Vernez, director of the education and human resources program at RAND, the Santa Monica think tank. “That’s a question we’ve begun to ask, but I don’t think anyone has the answer right now.”

Impact of Immigrants Debated

Answers to some narrower questions have begun to provide ammunition in the debate over immigration policy. For one, a survey by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services found that nearly two-thirds of all mothers who gave birth in the county’s four public hospitals in the 1990-91 fiscal year were undocumented. The women accounted for an estimated 28,800 births.

The health agency was able to reach this conclusion because it can, in effect, determine whether expectant mothers are legally in the United States. Under the Medicaid program, illegal state residents are only eligible for emergency care and obstetrics.

The number of new mothers in the country illegally is particularly important because, under the Constitution, their children are automatically U.S. citizens. That in turn makes their parents eligible for welfare benefits for the children. Gallegly, Gov. Pete Wilson and others have called for a constitutional amendment to remove this guarantee, which they contend is drawing women into the country.

Armed with such numbers, public officials--notably Wilson--are pleading with the federal government to pick up a larger share of the costs and calling for tough measures to stem the flow of illegal immigrants.

Wilson says that illegal residents and their U.S.-born children will absorb $3 billion in state and local services in four programs this year: about $1.1 billion in education, $950 million in health care and nearly $500 million each in welfare and prison costs.

Wilson cited examples of how these funds could be used instead to expand state health, education and welfare programs for people who are in California legally. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has also used the state’s statistics and Los Angeles County’s cost figures in calling for tough action.

Critics say Wilson’s numbers ignore the economic activity and tax revenue generated by illegal immigrants.

“By choosing to look at the cost side, one begins to paint a very biased picture,” UCLA economist Paul Ong said. “And it paints a picture of a population whose only role in society is to be a burden on the public. That’s very misleading because there are benefits.”

Many illegal immigrants take low-wage personal service jobs as maids, nannies and gardeners, Ong said. Those who work for companies provide a flexible, low-cost labor pool that may keep U.S. firms from relocating overseas.

At the same time, some costs of illegal immigrants are equally difficult to measure: the impact of crime, the burden on schools, the crowding of the jails and the effects of a larger population on the environment. More than that, some economists maintain that illegal immigrants depress wages and take jobs from low-income U.S. natives--a charge that remains hotly debated.

The very number of undocumented immigrants is controversial enough: how to count people who, out of fear of deportation, may try to remain invisible.

Census officials developed their unofficial estimate of illegal immigrants by subtracting the number of legal foreign-born residents from the total number of foreign-born residents, as measured by their periodic population surveys. Adjusting the result according to other demographic information, they estimate there are 3.5 million to 4 million illegal residents in the country, with 200,000 to 300,000 annually.

The INS prepared its figure from a host of data, including the number of people who overstay their visas, its estimate of illegal border crossings and annual mortality rates. It arrived at a total of 3.5 million in 1993, with an additional 300,000 residents arriving annually.

The Census Bureau estimates that California has 52% of the national total of illegal immigrants, from which Wilson calculates that there are about 2 million in the state. The INS, which figures that only 40% of the nation’s illegal immigrants live in California, pegs the state’s total at nearly 1.3 million.

Others use higher national figures. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which seeks to tighten immigration laws, uses 4.8 million, which it bases on a projection by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based research organization.

Some politicians reach still higher. Gallegly said in a June 4 news release that “INS officials estimate the number at some 6 million.” INS spokesmen and demographers say they have issued no such number.

Gallegly said in an interview that he got his figures from “Border Patrol people I’ve met with.” He was unable to supply any names.

Difficult as it is to get a handle on the number of illegal residents, the burden they impose on public services is harder yet. Perhaps the most widely respected analysis was done by Los Angeles County.

The study divided the county’s 2.3 million recent immigrants as of fiscal 1992 into categories: 630,000 recently legalized immigrants who entered the United States since 1980; 720,000 who received amnesty under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986; 700,000 illegal immigrants and 250,000 U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

The study found that the county spent $308 million on illegal immigrants, and that the immigrants paid $36.2 million in county taxes and $777 million in state and federal taxes. It did not assess costs for services in state and federal programs.

Methodology Under Fire

Although this study has drawn less fire than most others, it too has provoked some criticism. An analysis by the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank, found the cost estimates generally too high and the revenue estimates too low, largely because the study underestimated the immigrants’ incomes.

Manuel Moreno-Evans, director of the Los Angeles County study, said most of the Urban Institute’s findings generally supported the study or cited limitations that the authors had acknowledged.

“We did not include some very significant revenues that should have been included,” Moreno-Evans said. “The major reason is that there hasn’t really been an agreement on how to apportion them.”

Two more controversial studies were performed by Richard A. Parker and Louis M. Rea of San Diego State on the net costs of providing services to undocumented immigrants in San Diego County.

In their initial August, 1992, study, Parker and Rea found that 200,000 illegal immigrants in San Diego County accounted for net state and local costs of $146 million annually. Assuming that the county was home to 5% of California’s illegal residents and that other counties accrued similar costs and revenues, the authors pegged the statewide costs of illegal residents at $3 billion.

This was one of the figures Gallegly cited in August, well after the authors’ methodology and conclusions had sparked considerable criticism.

In their second study, Parker and Rea concluded that the cost was $244 million in San Diego County and $5 billion statewide.

Many have challenged the number of illegal residents cited by the study. Other projections put the San Diego County total at 100,000 to 150,000.

And Parker’s cost and revenue estimates have been challenged by various academicians. Parker’s sample of illegal immigrants was particularly controversial: residents of migrant camps in his first study, augmented in his second by those found at such places as medical clinics, social service agencies, soup kitchens, detention facilities and street corners.

Hans Johnson, a demographer at the California Research Bureau, said the survey would tend to find the unemployed and lower-paid immigrants. “But if you’re working 60 hours a week and you make $10 an hour and you don’t frequent any of the places where this survey was conducted, then you’re not going to be picked up,” he said.

The Cost of Services

The most sweeping study was Huddle’s, which was released this summer. He looked at the cost to government programs of 19.3 million immigrants--legal and illegal--who arrived in the United States since 1970. He relied heavily on extrapolations from the Los Angeles County study as well as on census figures, academic research and his own controversial surveys of job displacement by immigrants.

He found public assistance costs of $42.5 billion more than the $20.2 billion in taxes paid by legal and illegal residents for 1992. An estimated 4.8 million illegal immigrants accounted for $11.9 billion of the net costs.

This month, Huddle unveiled a new study of costs in California. He found that the 7.4 million legal and illegal immigrants who settled in the state since 1970 cost $18.2 billion more than the $8.9 billion they paid in taxes, including net costs of $5.12 billion for illegal immigrants.

Some longtime immigration specialists dismiss Huddle’s work as being anti-immigrant and outside the academic mainstream. They contend that his methodology and assumptions were skewed to drive up cost figures and hold down revenue data.

Jeffrey S. Passel, an immigration specialist with the Urban Institute, said Huddle understated tax revenues paid by immigrants by at least $50 billion--more than enough to offset his total deficit. “You end up with a plus rather than a minus,” Passel said.

Passel also said Huddle omitted some tax payments--such as Social Security, unemployment insurance, and state and federal gasoline taxes--and underestimated others by understating incomes and miscalculating tax rates.

Huddle, in interviews, supported his findings as being valid and generally accurate. He said he did not consider Social Security taxes paid by immigrants because he did not include benefits collected by immigrants either.

Other taxes were excluded, Huddle said, because the amounts were small or no data was available or they were not in the Los Angeles County study. And he said any corporate tax benefits would have been outweighed by lower wages caused by immigrants, which are not included.

Huddle acknowledged some shortcomings in revenue estimates. But he insisted that the total was only $3 billion--which was more than offset by updated higher figures for benefits received by immigrants.

More disputed is Huddle’s estimate that 25% of immigrants in low-skilled jobs displaced native-born American workers, thus driving up public assistance costs for the native-born by $11.9 billion. Passel and others dispute the 25% figure because Huddle overlooked the jobs and economic growth that immigrants generate by spending money and starting businesses.

Huddle said his estimate that 1 in 4 low-skilled jobs held by immigrants would otherwise go to native-born Americans was based on the lower end of a range of studies that found displacement rates of 25% to 67%. He said his approach is controversial because he was breaking new ground, “so there is a tremendous amount of resistance.”

“I have no anti-immigrant bias,” Huddle said. Rather, he said, the Urban Institute and its researchers were “pro-immigrant.”

Some congressional Republicans have been quick to tout Huddle’s numbers.

The day that Huddle’s national study was published, Gallegly expressed outrage at the high costs detailed by Huddle. “The study should put to rest the myth that illegal aliens contribute more in taxes than they consume in services,” the congressman said.

Asked how he assessed the study’s validity, Gallegly said: “The guy is an academic. The only people who have challenged Huddle that I know of are illegal immigration activists.”

After meeting with Huddle, he said: “I really believe that if there is any error in the Huddle report, it’s on the conservative side.”

Times correspondent Richard Core contributed to this report.