$100 Million Illegal Immigrant County Drain

A U.S. county near the Mexican border spent $101.5 million on public services for illegal immigrants in the last year and officials plan to bill the president because the federal government has failed miserably to enforce immigration laws and municipalities shouldnâ??t get stuck with the exorbitant cost.

Armed with a county-commissioned report documenting how illegal immigrants are draining their area, supervisors in Californiaâ??s San Diego County will bill President George W. Bush to reimburse taxpayers because the federal government has not stopped illegal immigrants from crossing the border and using publicly funded services.

The reportâ??s $10l.5 million figure doesnâ??t even include the cost of public education or unpaid medical bills for illegal immigrants, although it used figures from the countyâ??s Hospital Association to estimate $155 million in unpaid medical costs by illegal immigrants in the last year alone.

The county probe reveals that nearly half of the U.S. taxpayer funds–$48.5 millionâ??went to house illegal immigrant prisoners and that the county directly spends $527 for each of the estimated 210,000 illegal immigrants living in its jurisdiction. That translates into an expenditure of $35.21 per taxpaying resident.

The money comes out of the countyâ??s general fund and officials assure it could be better utilized to fix roads, parks and trails. Because it is a hotbed of illegal immigrants, San Diego County has for years gotten stuck with the crippling high cost of providing public services for illegal immigrants who rarely pay taxes.

Supervisors have sent the federal government bills in the past, but the county has never received reimbursement. Fed up lawmakers say they this time they plan to aggressively pursue a federal reimbursement for their constituents since there seems to be no end in sight to the governmentâ??s negligent immigration enforcement.