Thread: Making Illegal Immigrants Feel At Home in California

Making Illegal Immigrants Feel At Home
By: Assemblymember Jean Fuller

Approximately eleven million illegal immigrants call the United States their home, and an estimated one in every four is living right here in California.

By some accounts, California’s illegal immigration problem costs the state’s taxpayers more than $10.5 billion each year in education, medical care and incarceration services.

Those who tell you this is not a serious issue fail to recognize the significance of these numbers. Instead of coming up with ways to stem the flow of illegal immigration, they propose solutions that only exacerbate it.

Assembly Bill 976, authored by Democrat Assemblyman Charles Calderon, would prohibit local governments from enacting ordinances that allow landlords to collect residency or citizenship information of prospective tenants.

While Governor Schwarzenegger has been steadfast in his opposition of rewarding illegal immigration, he disappointed many taxpayers and Californians this year by signing AB 976.

Supporters of the bill contend that collecting information on tenants should be made illegal. This practice, they say, has no place in public governance. The truth is that this is both legal and commonplace.

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “The [Fair Housing] Act does not prohibit discrimination based solely on a person’s citizenship status. Accordingly, asking housing applicants to provide documentation of their citizenship or immigration status during the screening process would not violate the Fair Housing Act. In fact, such measures have been in place for a number of years in screening applicants for federally-assisted housing.â€

Communist East Germany was able, for decades and in much more unfavorable landscape controll its borders with West Germany, so that almost no one escaped west and no troublemaker was able to enter.

US, a country which sent a man to the Moon (and got him safely back) fourty ears ago is unable to control its southern borders?

Just technology alone should be able to take care of the majority of the ilegal immigration entries there.

But fighting for any (real) reform, making ilegal entry effectively punishible will always go into self-interest of too many people in the US: from huge vegetable and fruit growers, to any size of construction and home improvement and landscaping outfit, down to middle class and profesional women who cannot clean therir house, cook or babysit their kids.

Each city having more than one place where Hispanic laboresr wait each day to be picked up, with cities accommodating them with toilets etc., INS would have no problem to collect them in ten thousands each day.

So, be realistic, relax. US can support not 300 but 600 million people, many folks have land in families since King George, all those million acres need to be developed, all oversupply of everything needs to be sold. So it is not just illegals pushing wages down, taking perhaps some job away, it is also we need them to buy, consume, spend, develop, etc.

So, be realistic, relax. US can support not 300 but 600 million people, many folks have land in families since King George, all those million acres need to be developed, all oversupply of everything needs to be sold. So it is not just illegals pushing wages down, taking perhaps some job away, it is also we need them to buy, consume, spend, develop, etc.

Patently, factually.. false!

WRONG!
No, there is not unlimited land for development, No, there is not infinite water, air, food to support twice the population.

Two days ago, for the very first time, an air quality warning was issued in my area for high concentrations of particulates suspended in the air. While we've had other pollution alerts/warning in the past here, this type - at this time of year - was a first.

Similarly, for those that have been following the unusual hydrology situation in the other areas of the US, there are water shortages where there had previously not been any before. No, I'm not talking about the SW US - they've had to deal with water shortages for decades in places. I'm talking about the US SE - which receives an annual typical rainfall of about 40-60".

And, then we could talk about the plowing under of urban/suburban farmland (to develop it into suburban cookie-cutter houses, of course), and things like, industrial pollution/waste, the encroachment of natural hazards at the urban/rural interface - can you say, 'wildfires'? I thought you could. No, the US does not NEED any more people. We NEED to better administer and balance what resources exist with a sustainable economy and environmental policy.