LA Times: "Officials fear that the county will get stuck with many costs for those who apply for citizenship"

Basically, nobody outside California knows anything about the history of illegal immigration, so anything the Heritage Foundation says about the likely costs of another amnesty is automatically "controversial." But, in California ... From the Los Angeles Times:

L.A. County officials worried about costs of immigration overhaul 

With an estimated 1.1 million people in L.A. County illegally, officials fear that the county will get stuck with many costs for those who apply for citizenship.

By Richard Simon, Los Angeles Times 

May 11, 2013, 5:05 p.m. 

WASHINGTON — Few regions will absorb the impact of future immigration reforms more than Los Angeles County, home to an estimated 1.1 million people in the country illegally, one-tenth of the nation's total. 

As the Senate Judiciary Committee began debating the bipartisan immigration bill last week, county officials voiced concerns that local taxpayers will be "left holding the bag" to pay for the brunt of healthcare and other services for multitudes of immigrants who apply for citizenship. 

Local and state officials believe the overhaul bill will encourage those in the country illegally to come out of the shadows and turn to local services during the proposed 13-year-long pathway to citizenship. 

"The one thing that's really clear as day is that the federal government is going to be protecting itself against costs, and we're going to be left holding the bag," said Mark Tajima, an analyst with the county's chief administrative office. 

In Washington last week for the start of the debate, county officials, including Supervisors Don Knabe and Zev Yaroslavsky, warned of a "major cost shift'' to state and local governments from the proposed legislation and pressed Congress to provide federal aid to help cover future costs. 

Officials could not, however, provide a figure on the potential tab. Instead, as they made the rounds on Capitol Hill, they pointed to the $800 million the county received in the last big immigration overhaul signed by President Reagan in 1986. 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), after meeting with county officials, brought up the county's concerns at the Judiciary Committee meeting and directed her staff to look into the possibility of creating a "state impact assistance" fund, similar to the $4 billion provided to local and state governments in the 1986 bill. ...

A memo to the Board of Supervisors from a top county government affairs officer said some of the provisions of the bills "would be especially unfair because newly legalized individuals would be paying taxes, fines and fees to the federal government, but state and local governments, such as the county, would have to bear most of the cost of services provided to them."

Although the county provides emergency care to all, regardless of legal status, county officials say the legislation could significantly increase its costs for non-emergency care. They point to an estimate that up to 446,000 of such immigrants in the county have no health insurance. 

Los Angeles County spends roughly $600 million a year on healthcare for immigrants in the country illegally, officials said. 

States are also concerned about how they will pay for services, including English proficiency classes sought by applicants for legal status at a time when funding for such adult school programs has been cut. Community colleges and other institutions will be flooded with demand. 

"For states like California and New York, there is the potential of a lot of people coming to the state and local government for assistance," said Sheri Steisel, senior federal affairs counsel for the National Conference of State Legislatures. "Just because the federal government has decided not to provide access to federal benefit programs does not mean that the need goes away." 

County officials want Congress to create a fund similar to the $4-billion allocation in 1986 or make applicants for legal status eligible for federal benefits sooner. Some 720,000 of the 2.7 million immigrants granted amnesty nationwide as a result of the 1986 overhaul lived in Los Angeles County. 

Interesting number: over a quarter of the unexpectedly large total of illegal aliens amnestied last time were in Los Angeles County. In turn, L.A. County turned out to be the central engine of the 2000s Housing Bubble and Bust, both in Los Angeles County, but, even worse, in areas where people are spun off too from L.A., such as the Inland Empire, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.