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L.A. overwhelmed by immigrants
January 2, 2007

Re "What's L.A.'s problem?" Opinion, Dec. 27

Josh Kun assures us that "the big L.A. problem is not the fact of immigration — undocumented or not — but the city's conception of it, how we see ourselves. It's fixable." He advises us simply to look at millions of immigrants and reflect upon ourselves. I do this every day, commuting by bus and train.

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Kun's multicultural exercise in self-affirmation disguises what I see as another "fact of immigration." As the son of an immigrant and a native Angeleno, as one who teaches immigrants and working-class students, I remind Kun that the environmental, educational, medical, demographic and social costs of unchecked immigration are overwhelming our infrastructure. The left welcomes this, and the right profits from this.

As the middle class continues to flee the increasingly expensive Southland, and the rich wall themselves up on hills and in towers, the city of Los Angeles grows each year more congested, degraded and balkanized. How will millions more people, most of whom are poor and undereducated, halt this decline?

JOHN L. MURPHY

Los Angeles