http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/07 ... 675135.txt

Sunday, July 16, 2006
Last modified Saturday, July 15, 2006 8:33 PM PDT


Taxes shouldn't help illegal immigrants

By: Joseph Turner - Commentary

As the author of the City of San Bernardino Illegal Immigration Relief Act, an initiative that has served as the basis for proposed local legislation that would crack down on landlords and employers of illegal aliens throughout the nation, it was with great interest that I read the recent North County Times editorial criticizing Councilwoman Marie Waldron's call to crack down on landlords who rent to illegal aliens ("Escondido should evict Waldron's idea," July 11). To be blunt, it was embarrassingly absurd, hyperbolic and riddled with logical inconsistencies.

To suggest mass homelessness goes beyond the pale. Illegals would simply migrate to another city that is more welcoming, ideally Los Angeles. These ridiculous scare tactics distract from legitimate dialogue.

Three arguments are made in opposition to this proposal: moral, economic and legal.

Taxpayers do not have a moral obligation to feed, clothe and educate the world's castoffs. The children of illegal aliens are ravaging our public schools. Illegal aliens are overwhelming our emergency rooms and disproportionately impacting our prisons. What is immoral is refusing to act while Californian taxpayers and our children suffer these harmful impacts.

This moral argument is confusing. If homelessness is an indictment of our morals as a society, it would seem to follow that we are an immoral lot for allowing fellow citizens to live in such conditions. Are we to understand that it is the North County Times' position that taxpayers are morally obligated to pay to house all of our homeless? Where does your morality end and your socialism begin? I suspect your wallet.

When you start living in mud huts, riding bicycles and using your discretionary income to take care of the rest of the world, then you can talk. Until then, don't use my money to pay for your morals.

To contend that our economic prosperity depends on illegal aliens is ridiculous. The importation of millions of illegals who are poor and uneducated simply cannot be a benefit to our society. Common sense dictates this to be the case. Otherwise, our society wouldn't place such an enormous significance on education and devote billions each year to this effort so that our children can be equipped to compete in the 21st century. There is an inherent contradiction between the North County Times' supposition that uneducated illegal aliens are beneficial and its unceasing support for every single education bond (state and local) that comes down the pike. Our nation's economic dominance would not persist if we allowed our educational system to deteriorate.

Your attack on legal grounds is dubious. Harboring illegal aliens is a federal crime. Are you suggesting that this federal law is in violation of fair-housing laws? Additionally, there are numerous examples of local and state laws dealing with illegal immigration, most notably Arizona's passage of Proposition 200 in 2004. Furthermore, Congress explicitly granted permission to state and local governments to deal with immigration in 1996. Clearly, local governments are not pre-empting the federal government.

The fact of the matter is that local governments can't afford not to enact such measures.

San Bernardino resident Joseph Turner is executive director of the anti-illegal immigration activist nonprofit group Save Our State.