N.C. county tightening up on public services for illegal aliens...

N.C. county tightening up on public services for illegal aliens


By Kristin Collins
The News & Observer (Raleigh), May 24, 2008


Raleigh -- Beaufort County in North Carolina, known for sweeping views of the Pamlico and Pungo rivers, is working toward a new distinction.

Leaders say they want to make their rural county in the eastern part of the state the toughest place in the country for illegal immigrants.

The county commissioners are meeting with a lawyer to help identify public services that can be denied to illegal immigrants. And in cases where it is not legal to exclude people, they say they may eliminate programs entirely - including federally funded prenatal care for poor women - in an attempt to drive illegal immigrants from the county.

'They're coming to the United States illegally and bringing their pregnant wife and children,' said Hood Richardson, the Beaufort commissioner who is leading the charge. 'Those families are falling on our social welfare systems. We can't afford that.'

Beaufort County, about 100 miles east of the state capital of Raleigh, has already become a leader in the state in discouraging undocumented Hispanic immigrants. The seven-member Board of Commissioners has declared English its official language, removed Spanish signs and bilingual automated phone answering systems and begun tracking the number of Spanish-speaking people who use social services.

In April, Richardson asked the health and social services departments to determine the number of illegal immigrant clients by counting Spanish surnames.

More than 60 people from across Eastern North Carolina, all legal residents with Spanish names, descended on the most recent commissioners' meeting to protest the move.

'It's just discrimination,' said Cipriano Moreno, pastor of Alpha and Omega, a Hispanic Baptist church in the county seat, Washington. 'They don't like Hispanics here. They think that all the Hispanics are here illegally, but they're not.'

County Manager Paul Spruill said the county does not plan to begin counting Spanish names. But the commissioners say they will continue to target illegal immigrants in other ways.

'A lot of people are unaware of the cost; they don't know what this is doing to our hospitals and our schools,' said Commissioner Stan Deatherage. 'We're working as a grass-roots effort to draw attention to the problem.'

Deatherage says he hopes the county will inspire a national effort to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that guarantees children public education regardless of their immigration status. He says he wants to see illegal immigrants barred from schools nationwide.

Deatherage said this week that he thinks Beaufort County has one of the highest proportions of illegal immigrants in the state. Census figures, however, show that about 4 percent of Beaufort's residents are Hispanic, compared with nearly 7 percent statewide.

The census does not track illegal immigrants, but advocates estimate that about half of Hispanic immigrants are in the country illegally. If that estimate holds true, about 930 of Beaufort County's 46,000 residents were illegal immigrants in 2006.

Commissioner Robert Cayton is among a minority who has opposed the board's efforts.

'Illegal immigration is a problem in the United States, and it's one that the federal government needs to address,' Cayton said.

He says the county has plenty of its own problems: lagging schools, a lack of economic development, the need for a better road system and persistent poverty.

Nearly 18 percent of Beaufort County's residents, and about a quarter of its children, live in poverty. Its economy is reliant on farming, manufacturing and tourism _ all industries that use immigrant labor.

The board's first action came in February 2007, when it required the removal of Spanish signs and informational materials from public buildings. The move was largely symbolic, because the county is barred from removing signs in health clinics, social services offices and other places that get federal or state funding.

But bilingual courthouse signs prohibiting firearms were replaced with wordless pictorial signs. The commissioners also scrapped an automated telephone answering system at the health department, after realizing it was illegal to remove its Spanish language option. Staff members now answer the phones.

In the past few months, board members met with a lawyer from the Washington-based Immigration Reform Law Institute, which advocates a crackdown on illegal immigrants. Spruill, the county manager, said he is working with the institute to determine what services can be denied to people who lack proof of legal residency.

Illegal immigrants are already barred nationally from programs such as welfare and food stamps, but they can use some public services such as libraries and health clinics. The county cannot ask residents for documentation to access programs that receive state or federal money. It also cannot deny federally defined essential services, such as public education or emergency medical care.

Spruill said he is scrutinizing services as basic as public water to see whether the county is legally required to provide them.

Beaufort County is following the lead of Prince William County, Va., which also sought the advice of the institute's lawyers. In 2007, the northern Virginia county made legal residency a requirement for programs including mortgage assistance and substance-abuse prevention. The county also created a police unit to root out illegal immigrants.

The actions drew strong opposition. Hundreds of people overflowed meeting chambers. An advocacy group sued, and Hispanic residents organized a boycott.

Richardson and Deatherage said they hope to go at least as far as Prince William County, if not further.

Rather than bow to state and federal rules, Richardson said, he wants to scrap some programs that receive federal and state money, including health clinics and prenatal care for the poor. He said he would continue vaccinations because they are important to public health.

'When you're a pregnant lady sitting there, that's a personal problem,' Richardson said. 'That's not a public problem.'

Efforts to reach the county health and social services directors were unsuccessful.

Richardson said he would keep interpreters at the health and social services departments, but he said he favors charging people to use them. A majority of the board voted down his motion to do that in April, but the county is logging the number of people who use interpreters in an attempt to count illegal immigrants.

In an interview, Richardson twice referred to illegal immigrants as '[...].' He said that they threaten to turn the United States into a bilingual nation and that he fears they will foment political and social dissent.

So far, he has faced only muted opposition from a minority of board members. A spokesman for the N.C. Association of County Commissioners said that group has not taken a position on immigration ordinances such as Beaufort County's.

County Commissioner Jerry Langley said he sees the effort to punish illegal immigrants as 'political' - Richardson is up for election in November - and considers many of the proposed measures, such as limiting access to health care, counterproductive.

'It wasn't too long ago that African Americans were treated the same way,' said Langley, who is black. 'So I find it hard to stereotype a race of people and attack.'

But Langley was among those who voted for removing Spanish signs and disabling the telephone answering system.


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