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We Get E-Mail
Glendora, CA
June 3, 2004
Chief William J Bratton
Los Angeles Police Department
Room 619, 150 North Los Angeles Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012Dear Chief Bratton: Re. Driver's Licenses for Illegal Aliens
Last fall when the controversy over California driver's licenses for illegal aliens erupted, I spent most of a Saturday researching the background of this matter. In view of your shoulder-to-shoulder solidarity appearance yesterday with Senator Cedillo, Speaker Nuñez, and Assemblyman Firebaugh, perhaps you should also crack the books and do some Internet keystrokes.
Illegal Immigration is Against the Law
According to the DHS, an illegal alien is "a person who is in the United States in violation of U.S. immigration laws. Such a person may have entered illegally-that is, without Immigration and Naturalization Service inspection (undocumented) or using fraudulent documentation-or legally under a non-immigrant visa or other temporary condition and subsequently violated the terms of the visa or other terms of entry."
Federal laws, USC 8, Sec. 1325, 274, 275, 276, 277, make it a federal felony to "aid, abet, assist, encourage or induce an illegal alien to remain in the United States". Who gave Senator Cedillo, Speaker Nuñez, and Assemblyman Firebaugh the rights to wipe their feet on these laws, and on the voters of California?
Any decision to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants begins by acknowledging that immigrant rights don't belong to those who have no right to be here. This bedrock national sovereignty principle is embedded within our national immigration laws. Since it's against federal laws for illegal aliens to work in our country, why would any focused American legislator advocate a bill that allows state driver's licenses to be issued to illegal aliens so they can drive to work, - in direct contravention of United States laws? Why would any American legislator vote for such an abomination?
Illegal Immigration is a Disaster for Unskilled American Labor
There's hardly a scintilla of evidence supporting the notion that that illegal immigrant labor is necessary for our economic health. In fact, just the opposite is true. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 2000 and 2003, the nation's labor force (people who want to work) increased by about 3.8 million. Approximately 2 million of this increase was attributable to recent legal & illegal immigrants joining the work force; a labor segment heavily comprised of uneducated & unskilled individuals. During the same period, the number of new people actually working increased by 900,000. Yet, by 2003, the number of legal & illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. since 2000 and found work was approximately 1.9 million. This means that employment among the native-born Americans and established immigrants fell by about one million, while new legal & illegal immigrants substantially increased their access to jobs in the U.S.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics also reports that from 1979 to 2001, the real earnings of men without high-school diplomas fell 28 percent, and the flood of illegal competition deserves much of the blame.
Alan Greenspan recently stated that America has an oversupply of low-skilled, low-educated workers. In fact, this country is saturated with unemployed low- educated & poorly skilled American workers. Yet, one of the primary objectives of this driver's license proposal is turning a blind-eye toward millions of uneducated and unskilled illegal foreign workers in California.
Harvard Professor George Borjas, the nation's leading immigration economics expert, using U.S. Census data between 1960 - 2000, just released a report showing that when immigration increases the supply of workers in a skill category, the earnings of native-born workers in that same category fall. The negative effect will occur regardless of whether the immigrant workers are legal or illegal, temporary or permanent. It is the presence of additional workers that reduces wages, not their legal status. In fact, Professor Borjas' report states that two decades of growth in the supply of immigrant workers cost native-born American men an average $1,700 in annual wages by the year 2000. The report further suggests that the various amnesty proposals currently floating around Washington will depress Americans' wage growth for all levels of education and job skills. Whose side are you on Chief Bratton?
Both the California Division of Labor and the GAO reported in 1999 that there were two farm workers for every agricultural job in California. This glut of farm workers had depressed agricultural wages over the past twenty years, in inflation adjusted terms, by 20%, and spawned deplorable working conditions.
The bi-partisan U.S. Commission on immigration Reform, working with the Bush Administration (1989-93) concluded that there were at least 190,000 farm workers already in America who were out of work at any given time. This federal commission said the oversupply of farm workers was a major reason why farm workers' real incomes had fallen by almost half over the previous two decades.
Illegal immigrants represent a labor segment that contributes less than 4% of our total national output. It's a myth, partially born-out of the necessity to euphemize this unlawful labor segment, that Americans won't do hard or grubby labor. The truth is that Americans won't live two and three families in a garage, or 20 in a trailer, and suffer similar indignities just to sell their first-world labors at third-world levels. No technologically advanced industrial nation like the U.S. that has 27 million illiterate adults and another 20-40 million adults who are marginally literate need have any fear about a shortage of unskilled workers.
On February 7, 2004, some 375,000 more jobless American workers exhausted their unemployment insurance -- because they have been out of work so long that the system for tiding them over isn't long enough. According to the Washington Post, another 2 million Americans workers are on their way to meet the same fate over the next six months. Certainly some of these Americans might find work in sectors dominated by illegal aliens.
Illegal Immigration is a Financial & Infrastructural Disaster for California
Here in California, if we add-up the expenses of just the basic components of illegal immigration for a single year, - - K-12 education for 430,000 kids, pre-natal & delivery costs in county hospitals for 84,000 illegal moms, monthly subsidies to these same illegal moms for their new U.S. citizens, emergency health care costs borne by the State's major counties, and the costs to incarcerate about 24,000 illegal alien felons in state/county prisons, we're at $5.9 billion, year after year after year, and climbing. (Please see attached spreadsheet)
Los Angeles County's underground cash economy is a financial disaster, with an estimated 28% of the work force (mostly illegal immigrants) paid in cash, thus depriving the safety net of an estimated $1.1 billion annually.
California leads the nation in suffocating under the burden of medically uninsured people. California spent $1.55 billion in 2002 for medical care for uninsured illegal aliens. Los Angeles County recently voted to close 16 community clinics, and reduced by 25% funding for its network of private clinics partnering with the County. In addition to this, within the last decade, 50 emergency rooms and 17 trauma centers throughout Southern California have closed their doors, all because they couldn't afford to keep them open because of the exponentially increasing numbers of uninsured patients that include critical-masses of illegal aliens. The County's population grew 7.4 percent in the last decade; a period in which 27 hospitals closed their doors. Additionally, 81 hospitals no longer have emergency rooms. Los Angeles County spent about $340 million in 2002 providing health care to illegal immigrants, according to a report from the Department of Health Services. So bad is the crisis here that some patients must wait 4 days for a hospital bed, and some even die while waiting for these beds.
The statewide system is "on the brink of collapse," according to a 2003 study by the California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems. The study warned that thousands of workers will lose their jobs and hospitals will close if the split between rising costs and declining revenues keeps growing.
SB 1160 Will be a Catalyst for (X 000) More Illegal Aliens to Enter California
Just like the 1986 IRCA statute that saw the national illegal immigrant population explode (after amnesty) from 1 million to 8-12 million, so too will this driver's license legislation have an exponentially negative effect, as hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants storm our borders looking for employment; - sponsored by a radical band of liberal law-makers; a group of legislators who seem to care more for illegal foreigners than they do for their own citizens.
Senator Cedillo's Objective in Authoring SB 1160
This legislation seems to have far less to do with highway safety than it does with flooding California with hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, with little or no concern for the welfare of American citizens already here.
Do you suppose Senator Cedillo's previous work experience has anything to do with SB 1160? Prior to being elected to the California Assembly, Gilbert Cedillo was a long time union organizer whose labor movement was successful in displacing African-American janitors in Southern California in the 1980s, - with illegal immigrants. Again in the 1990s, American dry-wallers bit-the-dust, - once more losing-out to illegal aliens. At the Southwest Voter Registration Project 1997 annual conference, Mr. Cedillo remarked, "We move the union movement deep into the Latino community. We have displaced other work communities -- clothing, hotel and restaurant industries used to be done by Blacks and Anglos. Now we need to organize to be in a position to lead (take over) this country! Because of immigration and the birth rate, our population is growing -- Latinos are all over this nation". Is this your idea Chief Bratton of what Speaker Nuñez posts on his web site, "Everything we do must work toward the common needs of this great state"?
Apostate Democracy
Although driver's licenses for illegal aliens is overwhelmingly opposed by the people of California, (70%) neither the legislative malfeasance in passing such legislation, nor the devastation caused by illegal immigrants to California's legal population is important to this radical band of State legislators; the group of messianics who're pushing SB 1160. Unable to win-over mainstream Californians at the polls, and thoroughly unwilling to compromise their ideological objectives, they resort to a shell-game called Apostate Democracy. Their strategy is to portray illegals as victims with a script that ignores the rational pursuit of facts. This is a pantomime that looks for ways to circumvent the electorate, using unchallengeable & veiled moral justifications to obtain through stealth what would be denied at the polls. Apostate Democracy is a mutated version of democracy that believes its ideological objectives supersede "consent of the governed". This movement is ideologically dependent upon purées that are diet-rich in victimology and not-so-rich in patriotism or loyalty toward this country.
Bottom line
Some of our immigration policies are primarily guided by "nation-of-immigrants'" nostalgia and political & ideological opportunism. Bumper-sticker illegal immigration advocacy is painless and risk-free within certain constituencies. While it gives fair-weathered huddled-mass ideologues a cloistered sense of satisfaction, no nation was ever saved by immigration policies displayed on chrome.
This conflict between mainstream Californians and Apostate Democrats was inevitable. When all's said and done, it'll end-up as a ballot initiative because there's not a single factual, fiduciary or admirable reason to vote for SB 1160. It's a badge of honor to repudiate this abomination; and just the opposite to advocate legislation allowing illegal aliens to remain here because of messianic victimhood hyperbole that's terrified of the ballot box.
Sincerely,
Michael Scott
P.S. Your whoppers about "yellow arm bands" and "scarlet letters" demonstrates that the rigor of your analysis is its own undoing. Time to hit the books.
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