Immigration Cuts

* Recommendations by the U.S. Commission on Immigration for cuts in legal immigration are very welcome news (June 8). While the proposals do not go far enough, they are an important step in the right direction and provide a framework for further reductions.

The trimming of immigration from current annual levels of 900,000 to 700,000 for a few years, and then to 550,000, falls far short of the reduction to about 200,000 per year that would allow the United States to eventually stabilize its population. It would also leave the United States as the only industrialized country continuing to permit massive immigration.

For starters, immediate family reunification should be limited to spouses and children under 18--not parents, and not children up to 21. The employment category should be virtually eliminated as we instead put resources into training American workers. California’s unemployment rate is already a staggering 8.5%

On balance, the commission has offered suggestions for developing an immigration policy that works in the national interest, not against it.

RIC OBERLINK

Executive Director

Californians for Population Stabilization

Sacramento

* The Commission on Immigration Reform’s recommendations utterly fail to address this fundamental problem--the maldistribution of the legal immigrant population. Six states and metropolitan areas receive roughly 85% of all legal immigrants, but no solution is offered to the problem that 25%-50% of all immigrants and refugees to the entire country end up in California, the state with the highest unemployment rate.

The polls consistently have shown that most Americans believe that during the 1980s and 1990s there have been too many immigrants, both legal and illegal, to the United States.

If social cohesiveness is the desired goal, then a consensus--which does not currently exist, according to the polls--must first be developed among the majority of the people of this country that immigration is good for us. Until then, a moratorium on any further immigration, except for the immediate family (spouse and children) of U.S. citizens, is the obvious solution.

GEORGE RAYMOND TYNDALL

Los Angeles