Immigration, Welfare Reform Connected

The suggestions in Manuel Pastor’s essay “Growth Strategies must Include the Poor” (Dec. 8), are not likely to increase the income of low-level wage earners in Southern California as long as we permit a continued flow of unskilled workers from other countries to flood our job market. Our immigration policies force our own people in the inner cities to compete with new arrivals who are willing to work at whatever wage is offered.

The need to save our jobs for our own people will become even more important as the new welfare policies, requiring welfare recipients to find jobs after two years of public assistance, bring tens of thousands of new people into the job market. These people will need the entry-level jobs that are now taken by many of the new arrivals.

C.M. DEASY

San Luis Obispo