Welfare Reform’s Impact on Immigrants

* Re “Welfare Reform at California’s Expense,” editorial, Aug. 1:

It seems that The Times supports social services for legal immigrants as long as taxpayers in the other 49 states foot most of the bill. You conveniently neglected to mention that these immigrants are sponsored by pledges of financial support from family members. Your logic takes us to the proposition that a taxpayer in Alabama is more responsible for poor L.A. immigrants than their blood relatives.

Oh, and by the way, thanks for giving the big lie to your oft-stated contention that immigrants add more to the economy than they take out. If they truly did, California would have no problem.

HAROLD VIVALDI

San Clemente

* Your editorial complains that the compromise welfare bill will be “unfair to California taxpayers” because “immigration is a national issue.” You hit a raw nerve. Some San Diegans habitually complain that attempts to regulate the Mexican border are bad for local business. They also complain that border-crossing fees are unfair because borders are a national responsibility.

These arguments ring hollow, as does yours. Our national subsidy of California’s addiction to cheap alien labor should be curtailed. Change is always unfair to someone in the short term. In the more important long term, clear-cutting of old-growth forests should stop despite unfairness to loggers; recklessly low water prices should rise despite unfairness to farmers; and Los Angeles and all of California should pay for their addiction.

TOM BURTON

Encinitas

* I feel as if my country just slapped my face. My family immigrated to California from Canada in 1956. My father had a new job here. In 1967, at age 18, I became a citizen. As my brother became old enough to apply for citizenship, he developed schizophrenia. This pain-filled, horrendous brain disease has chased him all his life. He has not had the ability to stop by the INS office to apply for citizenship.

Both my parents worked in this country, as have I for 30 years. Between us, we contributed 80 years of taxes without ever having taken public benefits. Now the U.S. tells me our effort is little valued, that my brother will be denied treatment.

The so-called welfare reform act is the most discriminatory piece of legislation since slavery. It makes no distinction between sloth and disability. Legal immigrants do not come to this country planning on tragedy. Had we, we would have stayed in Canada, which has more compassionate social services.

CARLA JACOBS

Long Beach

* As I fill in the application from the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation to register my father’s name and the names of my maternal and paternal grandmothers to be listed on the “American Immigrant Wall of Honor,” I can’t help but wonder, with the mood of the current Congress members, when they plan to ship the Statue of Liberty back to France.

On the other hand, with the significant economic and cultural contributions of the immigrants from our neighbor to the south, how many generations will it take before there is an American Latino Fence Foundation soliciting funds from people to register names of their ancestors to be placed on the cleaned-up, reinforced fence they had to hurdle to get into this country?

ALEXANDER L. BRITTON

Los Alamitos