This is in reply to the editorial written by Scott Fina titled "Politics, symbols, liberty, and immigration" (Aug. 17).
After reading this rambling rather weird editorial, it is difficult to understand how the writer can think conditions today regarding immigration can be compared with conditions years ago when we needed large numbers of new immigrants. In those days, there were jobs waiting for them to fill, they had to work or go hungry because there was no taxpayer welfare, and land was available for homesteaders.
Today there are too many people seeking too few jobs, except in highly specialized fields like high tech fields that the vast majority can't go into due to lack of education and/or ability. Our government is lying to us about unemployment because they only count those who are now drawing unemployment insurance. With the exception of a few areas of the country such as San Francisco, unemployment and under employment is a serious problem. Illegal immigration is not the total cause of these conditions, but it certainly makes it worse.
To cite a few examples here locally and repeated in other parts of the country: Here in Santa Maria, when a big new supermarket opened, they had openings for 70 to 80 new employees. According to the manager, he had more than 3,000 applicants for those mostly minimum wage jobs. Wouldn't this be a good example of too many people seeking too few jobs? Do we really need more people here?
There is an area called Century City in Los Angeles filled with large office buildings. For years well-paid mostly black janitors cleaned these offices, but they lost their jobs when a company using illegal alien minimum wage workers took over. Is this fair to our citizens? Our president at the time refused to act to rectify this particular problem even at the request of the NAACP, so many of those who lost their jobs ended up on welfare. This is just one example of how corrupt our government has become due to the influence of powerful well-funded special interests that benefit from cheap labor.
It is difficult to understand why we need to accommodate every illegal immigrant who is unhappy with conditions in their country, by allowing them to come here illegally and unscreened, while legal immigrants abide by the rules. There are many special interests that back illegal immigration, but the largest and most effective lobbies are some of the farm organizations that buy the votes they need from our corrupt Congress to get what they want, and the Catholic Church. A past congressman from our district once told a large audience this when someone asked him how it was possible for our government to fail to solve our illegal immigration problem, which the majority of accurate polls show 87 to 91 percent of Americans are against. He told the truth even though he was himself a rancher and Catholic from a very rich family.
We now admit 1.2 million legal immigrants yearly and 125,000 from Mexico alone. Considering our present economic conditions, isn't that enough? Remember, as soon as they have just one child born an American citizen, they become eligible for all kinds of welfare benefits, which even include Section 8 housing subsidies. We all know the main reason Trump got elected, regardless of all of his negative points.
The largest organization fighting for immigration reform is the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Their experts propose the following solutions:
1. Making E-Verify mandatory to eliminate the job magnet, so nobody here illegally can work here.
2. Increase or decrease legal immigration in accordance with our labor needs.
3. Update the H-2A Farm Workers Visa Program, so that farmers will want to use it to obtain their needed labor legally. They presently prefer illegals because they make more money using them.
4. Slowly remove and deport illegals, especially those taking American jobs that our own unskilled and semi-skilled need.
Can anyone think of a better solution to solve this major American problem?
Richard Dydell is a resident of Santa Maria. Send your thoughts to [email protected].
