If the UCLA and USC professors whose studies early this year concluded that allowing illegal immigrants to stay in America would provide a huge boost to the economy thought their findings might end one of this country's longest-running policy and moral debates, they were sadly mistaken.

For the battle over illegal immigrants and whether they should be permitted some path to eventual citizenship actually heated up after those reports appeared.

On one side, the studies' authors and others insist that legalizing the currently undocumented would produce wage increases, increase tax receipts at all levels of government, up the consumption of consumer goods and create jobs.

The other side says that is probably baloney, but even if it's true, it would still come at the expense of American citizen workers who desperately want and need at least some of the jobs now taken by illegals.

What's constructive in all this is the perspective it lends to the longtime argument over how much illegal immigration costs state and local governments or whether the undocumented actually pay their own way via sales and gasoline taxes, property taxes (included in their rent payments) and other levies, including those on utility and telephone bills.

The anti-immigrant lobby argues that illegals cost California about $7 billion per year for services like public education and emergency medical care. But some studies say they pay in more than that in the obvious

taxes — plus an unknown amount in state and federal income tax. Plus, since many use counterfeit Social Security