By Deborah Bulkeley
Deseret Morning News
Wednesday, January 31, 2007

A coalition of Hispanic community leaders are calling on Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. to take a comprehensive look at the impact illegal immigration has on Utah — positive and negative.

The idea is to respond to a legislative audit under way, which is looking at the cost of educating undocumented students in Utah's public schools, said Tony Yapias, director of Proyecto Latino de Utah and one of four former directors of state Hispanic Affairs asking for the audit, along with other advocates.

"The whole issue is are we going to do an audit here, an audit there?" Yapias said. "Let's look at the whole picture."

"There's so much information we don't know," added Lee Martinez, another former Hispanic Affairs director who's asking for the audit. "Everybody's going on assumptions."

Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, said she's sponsoring the audit because she chairs the Senate Education Committee and it could be used as leverage in negotiating for federal funding for educating undocumented students and help "decide whether we want to get into those negotiations." She has stressed the audit won't violate federal law by asking students their immigration status.

Dayton said Tuesday that she'd welcome a broader audit.

"It never hurts us to have facts and information," Dayton said. "Added information benefits everyone, especially since it's an ongoing discussion."

Alex Segura, director of the anti-illegal immigration group Utah Minuteman Project, also said such an audit would be a useful tool to the state.

Mike Mower, spokesman for the governor, deferred comment until the audit request could be formally reviewed.

The letter, delivered Tuesday to Huntsman's office, asks the governor to "instruct a comprehensive study on the net economic impact of our undocumented population in Utah as soon as possible, and thereby help dispel the unfair and dangerous characterizations of Latinos in Utah." It includes a copy of a Texas audit released in December as a model.

"The absence of the estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas in fiscal 2005 would have been a loss to our gross state product of $17.7 billion," the Texas audit said. "Undocumented immigrants produced $1.58 billion in state revenues, which exceeded the $1.16 billion in state services they received. However, local governments bore the burden of $1.44 billion in uncompensated health-care costs and local law enforcement costs not paid for by the state."

Yapias said he's hoping Utah will take a "totally unbiased look at the real numbers." He predicts that the 100,000 or so undocumented immigrants in Utah will be found to be a net positive, if such an audit were conducted.

"We won't know until we can have a complete analysis," he said.

However, Segura believes the audit will show a net cost to the state from illegal immigration.

"It's a long time coming," Segura said. "We should have known 10 years ago so we would have some benchmarks to follow ... some way to measure what we're spending."

Also signed on to the audit are former Hispanic Affairs directors Leticia Medina and Lorena Riffo-Jensen, along with Jesse Garcia, chairman of the Ogden City Council; Rosa Martinez of Hispanos Unidos in St. George; Ingrid Guzman of Centro Hispano in Provo; and Leo Bravo of the Multicultural Center of Cache Valley in Logan.

The audit request says, "Given the current economy prosperity and low unemployment figures, we believe that the 'absence' of undocumented workers and their families from our state might reflect similar or better conclusions as in the Texas study. We recognize that our current federal immigration system is broken and in need of comprehensive immigration reform. To this end, we will continue to work with our congressional delegation toward a final resolution to this important national issue.

"We the undersigned therefore ask you, Governor Huntsman, to accept our request and instruct a comprehensive study on the net economic impact of our undocumented population in Utah as soon as possible, and thereby help dispel the unfair and dangerous characterizations of Latinos in Utah."