More Immigration Concerns

Fred Dickey asks, “This affluent society can certainly afford more expensive hamburgers, but can it afford the hidden costs that currently make those burgers and fries dirt cheap?” (“Undermining American Workers,” July 20). Let’s hope a national dialogue will soon commence to answer this question. And let’s hope that this long-overdue evaluation of illegal immigration will provide a more focused and rational direction than “just make it across the border.”

The real demand for illegal immigrant labor comes from employers who pay minimum or below legal wages while burdening the rest of society with obscene social costs. In the final analysis, no democratic society can allow a relentless flood of illegal immigrants to contravene its laws indefinitely, violate its borders, overwhelm its infrastructures and social systems, diminish employment possibilities for the uneducated and poor and degrade its way of life, as is happening here in California.

Michael Scott

Glendora

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My father is a U.S. citizen and 15 years ago he lost his job, three years short of retirement, to undocumented workers. The irony is that my father had entered the U.S. illegally some 40 years earlier. My father’s employment status changed because of the devaluation of the American worker as businesses increasingly fostered and competed in international markets, where labor is pennies to the U.S. dollar. So why blame undocumented workers for the devaluation of the American worker? Quite simply, it is easier to blame foreigners when we face a budget crisis.

Kevin Angel Fierro

San Diego

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The combination of high taxes and illegal competition helped drive my decision to leave California and start a business in Illinois. What surprises me most about the situation is the lack of response from some organizations that should be protecting workers. Dickey reminds us that Cesar Chavez fought for limited immigration. I can only hope that a modern labor hero will emerge and show similar leadership.

James Seidman

Naperville, Ill.