Bad news for immigrants

By Mike Andrew

"Let's microchip illegal immigrants so we can track them like lost dogs." - Pat Bertroche, Republican Congressional candidate, Iowa.
"How about we put down land mines to get them at the border?" - Tom Mullins, Republican Congressional candidate, New Mexico.

"Looks like to me, if shooting these immigrating feral hogs works, maybe we have found a (solution) to our illegal immigration problem..." – Republican State Representative Virgil Peck, Kansas.

It’s easy enough to dismiss such statements as the overwrought rhetorical flourishes of a few half-crazy right-wingers.

Certainly, no Washington state politician is likely to advocate shooting immigrants or blowing them up at the border.

Nevertheless, our state’s budget crisis – like the nation-wide recession which brought it about – has created an atmosphere of resentment towards immigrants, and proposals to take away state services that used to be available to them.

All of this is complicated, of course, by the failure of the Obama administration and the 111th Congress to address comprehensive immigration reform.

"I think that our state and nationally there's an increasing resentment against immigrants, legally or not legally, to be honest with you ... and I think it's growing," said Rep. Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney (D-46). "If we don't get immigration reform at the federal level, it's going to get worse."

The legislature adjourned its regular session and went into special session on April 26, still facing two critical fiscal challenges:
First, to close a cash deficit of more than $500 million dollars in the supplemental budget for the fiscal year that ends this June, and
Second, to write a budget that closes a projected $5-7 billion deficit in the 2011-2013 budget.

The two biggest budget-cutting proposals for the 2011-2013 budget both take services away from immigrants.

One proposal is to strip medical coverage under the Children's Health Program from an estimated 27,000 children whose legal status is unclear, for savings of $59 million.

The other is to eliminate the State Food Assistance Program, which provides food stamps for legal immigrants, among other low income and disabled residents, to save $45 million.

While these proposals promise budget savings, they don’t really add up economically.
Parents will seek treatment for their uninsured children at hospital emergency rooms, where medical care is even more costly than it would be through a state-funded insurance program, according to analysis from the immigrant rights organization One America.

Taking food stamps away from legal immigrants also has a negative fiscal impact on the state. “Food stamps produce an economic stimulus greater than any other spending and are needed during an economic crisis that has left more children and families food insecure than at any other time in Washington State’s history,” One America says.

Both programs have been spared from cuts in the House of Representative's version of the supplemental budget for this year, but their long term future is still in doubt.

DSHS is currently under a temporary federal restraining order preventing them from terminating immigrants' state-funded food assistance and denying new applications for eligible immigrants, pending litigation on the issue.