Lawmaker wants economic impact data on immigrants

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2006 | 6:57 a.m.

Assemblyman Mo Denis, D-Las Vegas, is pushing for legislation requiring the state to study the economic impact undocumented immigrants have on Nevada government.

Denis said that accurate information is vital because state and local officials across the country are taking steps to address illegal immigration.

"This is on everybody's mind this year - people are making accusations and going off assumptions and not data," said Denis, a second-term lawmaker who works as a computer technician.

The proposal almost certainly will touch off vigorous debate in the 2007 Legislature. Similar studies by private organizations have met with sharp criticism over methods and data.

Tatcho Mindiola, director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston, said research into the issue appears to be contradictory. "If you have an agenda, you can find numbers that back your point of view," he said.

If approved by the 2007 Legislature, Nevada's study would be the second conducted by a state. Texas released a study earlier this month concluding that undocumented immigrants contributed $420 million more to state coffers than they cost in government services.

Avoiding bias, and the perception of bias, is crucial to assessing the costs and benefits of the illegal immigrant population, said Mark Sanders, spokesman for Carole Keeton Strayhorn, the outgoing Texas state comptroller who released that state's report.

"You're going to have to look at it, not emotionally, but just statistics," Sanders said.

The critical element to achieving that goal: "The quicker you get it out of the hands of politicians, the better," he said.

In Texas, the comptroller's staff conducted the study - people Sanders said were "experienced at looking at numbers" and "do not have a political agenda."

Denis said that "how it is perceived will be the thing - if some feel that it's biased, then that wouldn't be as useful."

Denis said he wasn't sure whether he would prefer the study be conducted by a Nevada state office or a private organization under contract.

Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas - who has supported making citizenship a requirement for the recipients of state-funded Millennium Scholarships - said, "Our experience here in Nevada is that government-funded studies are not all that accurate (and) I'd be concerned about bias creeping into it."

Beers acknowledged that "a large number of citizens have expressed concerns that there may be a net cost to illegal aliens. Clearly, it's something citizens want to know more about."

Beers noted that some groups favoring tighter controls on immigration criticized the Texas study for not taking into account the cost of educating U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants.

"We have the benefit of seeing Texas' study and the questions that critics of that study bring up," he said.

Assemblyman-elect Ruben Kihuen, D-Las Vegas, said he was "100 percent in support" of the study and felt it would "reiterate what many are blind to see, or do not want to see - illegal immigrants are spenders, taxpayers and hard workers."

Keith Schwer, director of UNLV's Center for Business and Economic Research - which produced a 2003 study on the economic impact of non-native Hispanics to the Clark County economy - said that the starting point for any such study would be agreeing on a number for Nevada's population of undocumented immigrants.

"We'd like to have greater specificity with regards to legal and illegal immigrants," Schwer said.

Denis and others acknowledged this would be a challenge, and none of the officials consulted had a number that could be reliably used as the basis for such a study. Estimates by various private organizations go as high as 200,000.

In any case, Schwer said, "In Nevada, because of our significant growth, we're not as far along in sophisticated information as we should be.

"You have people making all kinds of arguments without facts."