Illegal Immigration

This is a hotly contested issue in California, and there will
inevitably be many points of view.  One problem with any study of this
nature, is the fact that all figures are based on estimations, and are
not objectively experimental.  Moreover, it is possible that the data
is biased against undocumented aliens, as most research is done by the
US government and other agencies wishing to draw attention to a
potential problem that affects all US citizens.

Because illegal immigration is widespread, and burdens a whole variety
of social services, I believe it is best to break down services into
smaller, more manageable fragments and examine them on an individual
basis, compare and then see how this correlates with the big picture.
For example, when looking at public school enrollment, (table 4.9) I
believe it is more useful to look at a breakdown of exactly which
counties have the greatest impacted schools and how undocumented
aliens are affecting class sizes, costs to schools etc.  Then compare
data from other counties.

I am rather confused by figures such as discussed in question 1 -- the
Urban Institute estimates costs of illegal immigrants at $1.8 billion,
whereas Calif's own initial estimate was $2.8 billion, which was later
revised.  How do we know which numbers to believe?  Here, the
discrepancy is $1 billion, not exactly something to disregard.

Because of the complexity and sheer amounts of data to look at, I'm
not sure this article is entirely appropriate to teach from, and I
would predict some difficulty in comprehension of the data presented.