Community Voices Weekly: The cost of deportations

Happy Sunday, Lookout Eugene-Springfield,

It’s not a stretch to call the Trump administration’s dramatic ramp-up of deportations the most controversial issue of Trump’s second term.

But lost amid the human toll of thousands of daily arrests — most targeting immigrants with no criminal history (violating immigration laws is a civil offense) — is the sheer cost of deportations. What else could we be doing with the billions of dollars being spent on immigration enforcement?

Gordon Lafer, a University of Oregon professor and research associate with the Economic Policy Institute, sought to find out. He helped create a “cost of deportations calculator,” which adds up the taxes collected through last year’s federal spending package Congress approved.

In a guest column last week, Lafer noted that “more than 20 million Americans saw their (Affordable Care Act) premiums skyrocket this year — making health insurance totally unaffordable for many. But if we hadn’t diverted so much money to mass deportations, we could have paid for those premiums for five years running.”

Data center discomfort

Lookout’s reporting last month that an unidentified client was asking the city of Eugene to confirm if a data center was among the allowable uses for the former Hynix property set off a flurry of reactions.

Letter-writers voiced fears of outsize water and electricity impacts, and urged changes to zoning laws to restrict their development in Lane County.

Last week, a Springfield City Council candidate added her voice to the debate. In a guest column, Callee Ackland wrote that, despite some potential benefits from artificial intelligence, which needs the data centers to handle massive amounts of computing power, the technology’s promise doesn’t yet seem to outweigh the risks for environmental harm and job displacement.

“It is for all these reasons that I find myself entirely opposed to the construction of hyperscale data centers, and so I join countless community members in calling for a moratorium on new data center development, along with statewide regulations on existing facilities that, at minimum, address power consumption, water usage, pollution, heat emission, and negative health impacts on surrounding communities,” Ackland wrote.

Homelessness, rural development, cannabis

Last week’s letters to the editor touched on everything from timber industry influence in Lane County elections to the importance of expanding our power grid.

One topic that’s taken on a life of its own is the steady stream of responses to congressional candidate Monique DeSpain’s July 27 guest column blaming left-wing policies for Eugene’s homelessness crisis.

Sara Koski, a well-known community liaison, emergency and shelter assistance volunteer in Eugene, added her voice to the discussion last week. Responding to a letter from a retired police officer who agreed with many of DeSpain’s points, Koski wrote that calling homelessness a “choice” makes it easier to ignore the circumstances that lead to homelessness.

“Personal responsibility matters to me. But so does understanding what happened to someone before deciding what they are responsible for,” Koski wrote.

Are Lane County’s unincorporated communities at risk? That’s the fear Lauri Segel of LandWatch Lane County expressed in a letter to the editor, urging people to pay attention to a state rule-making process that could lead to more development in rural parts of Oregon that lie outside of incorporated city boundaries.

“This rule-making would not build housing that is affordable to most Oregonians. But it would require participating counties to rezone rural farmland and forest land for commercial and “light industrial” uses, potentially including data centers, Amazon warehouses or other urban development,” Segel wrote.

And what about that marijuana tax revenue that was supposed to be a lifeline for Oregon schools? Springfield letter-writer Sara Dubick remembers the assurances from state leaders when recreational marijuana was legalized that it would help keep cash-strapped districts afloat. But with schools closing and teachers being laid off, the math doesn’t seem to add up.

“We need to do a critical, transparent, assessment of how we are spending the money we have. Taxpayers deserve to see the receipts for where their money is being spent,” Dubick wrote.

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recent Letters TO THE EDITOR

Can’t we just keep Eugene’s parks the way they are? | Letter to the editor

School districts are struggling financially. Weren’t marijuana taxes supposed to help? | Letter to the editor

UO professor’s ‘deportation calculator’ shows failure of immigration policies | Letter to the editor

Article on Medicaid spending overlooked physicians’ duty to provide care | Letter to the editor

Fight for Oregon’s rural communities before they become unrecognizable | Letter to the editor

A bipartisan idea for Congress: Ease permitting for power grid expansion | Letter to the editor

To understand and address homelessness, we must resist black-and-white labels | Letter to the editor

We should be wary of timber and corporate interests in our politics | Letter to the editor

There’s nothing modest about sales taxes | Letter to the editor

Oregon health insurance premiums keep rising. Isn’t it time for a better system? | Letter to the editor

recent guest columns

EWEB customers need real information about drinking water, not marketing disguised as news

Our communities need protections from the data center boom. A pause on new ones is the right place to start.

Lane County taxpayers are funding mass deportations. Here’s how much we’re paying.

Article on Oregon’s teacher preparation programs didn’t match the facts

Send us your Letter to the Editor — lte@lookoutlocal.com

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