I would like to commend our local police for taking steps to make our streets safer by setting up checkpoints for drunk drivers and unlicensed drivers. Santa Maria is currently the hit-and-run capital for a city its size in our state. I know that this is just one problem of many that plague our city, due to the fact that it is being overrun by illegal aliens.
I am a second-generation Santa Marian whose grandparents came here from Mexico legally. I resent the fact that so many of the illegal aliens who come here and break our laws by entering our country illegally and driving without licenses then benefit from the free food and health care from WIC. I am not sure what makes me more angry, my illegal neighbors who are cramming 14 people into their two-bedroom house, playing loud music, and using the yard to dispose of their beer cans and urinate, or the farmers who are employing them in the first place.
Maybe the local farmers would think twice about employing this cheap labor and breaking the law if they had to live next door to their employees. Maybe the farmers could shoulder some of the responsibility for a problem that they are instrumental in creating. I am not opposed to looking for solutions to this multi-faceted problem, but something has to change in this city. We have to stop turning a blind eye to the problems created by having so many illegal aliens reside in this city.
This article appears in Apr 16-23, 2009.