Long Past Time for Answers, Reforms

I flew off my bicycle early this year and woke up hours later in the overcrowded emergency room of an L.A. County hospital where roughly a third of the patients are illegal immigrants, piquing my interest in a story I couldn’t let go of.

It’s the story of California, the eternal destination.

It took me to MacArthur Park, where I claimed I was an undocumented immigrant from Spain and bought a fake driver’s license for the price of a good pair of running shoes.

I dragged myself across a sun-blasted stretch of Southern California desert to get some sense of what a woman’s last moments were like as she stumbled, fell and died during an illegal border crossing.

I went to a Mexican corn-growing town that was half empty because most of the men were in Los Angeles, driven north, in part, by U.S. subsidies to American farmers.

I visited the primitive mountaintop birthplace of a Los Angeles woman who had told me that if I saw where she came from in Mexico, I’d understand why she’s thrilled to be living in a so-so one-bedroom apartment with her six children.

And what have I learned?

That the ER staff at County-USC is worth every one of my tax dollars.

That hunger will always drive masses of people over, under and across a 2,000-mile border that divides worn-out boots and golden slippers.

And that U.S. immigration policy is screwy by design, built on lies and driven by money.

Three recent news stories make my point.

Story No. 1:

Redondo Beach police posed as employers to crack down on allegedly unruly day laborers, and you don’t need me to tell you a lot of day laborers are illegal immigrants.

Whatever the motive, those police raids -- as well as the sweeps by Border Patrol agents in Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties earlier this year -- are the equivalent of trying to drain Santa Monica Bay with a garden hose.

Story No. 2:

Wells Fargo just announced with self-promotional pride that it has opened 500,000 bank accounts nationally in three years for customers using the Mexican matricula consular identification card, and roughly half of those accounts are in California.

Guess what? There’s a good chance that someone using a matricula consular card for ID is not in the country legally. It’s not a stretch, then, to call this banking for illegal immigrants, and Wells Fargo and other banks are thrilled to tap into the multimillion-dollar market.

When I asked a Wells Fargo spokeswoman if new customers are queried about their legal status, she said:

“We don’t go there, because that’s not our role.”

Of course not.

Story No. 3:

This one, by my colleague Marla Dickerson in Mexico City, involves the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement.

Critics say continuing to give more than $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer subsidies to our rice farmers would keep Central American farmers at a huge disadvantage, driving those farmers north along the same routes used by the displaced Mexican corn farmers.

What have I learned?

That it’s fair to ask questions about the cost of illegal immigration and population growth in California, where schools, highways and hospitals are beyond capacity.

But throughout the year, I’ve been hearing from readers whose rage is misdirected at the guy waiting for work outside the Home Depot.

You can’t keep giving subsidies that drive people off their land, invite them to open U.S. bank accounts with virtually no questions asked and then get ticked off at them because they showed up and want to stay.

If you want to get angry, save it for the bank down the street. Save it for the congressman who pocketed a fat campaign donation from agri-business and then returned the favor with an even fatter taxpayer-funded handout.

And what about the chicken rancher who likes sticking it to illegals who can’t complain, or the consumer who doesn’t want to know whether the drywall guy has any papers because the price can’t be beat?

I could spend all day naming names, because there’s no end to the number of people who are in on it.

But enough of that.

Now that the presidential election is history, there’s at least a slim chance of political discourse that moves beyond the usual lies and blather.

President Bush, who has reconnected with Mexican President Vicente Fox and is in Chile for trade policy talks, has said immigration reform is a priority for his second term. If that’s true, let’s figure out how to import labor without the winks and the nods.

It really isn’t all that complicated to issue work permits that save lives and put coyotes out of business, to impose big fines for employers who hire illegals and to dangle economic aid to Mexico and other sending nations if they begin to clean up their own lies, hypocrisy and corruption.

California’s population, by the way, is expected to grow by another 10 million or so in two decades. So who’s doing the long-term planning for schools, highways, water supplies and healthcare?

Not the governor.

Definitely not the Legislature.

Earlier this month, a legislative committee on the future of California disbanded without ever having tackled any of the most obvious subjects.

What have I learned this year?

That the illegal immigrant who can easily open a bank account has every reason to ask why he can’t stay, just as the angry taxpayer has every reason to ask why he has to pay the bill.

That both of them deserve better answers and no-nonsense reforms.

I can’t forget the day in August when I paid a visit to the Calexico-Mexicali border and watched Albert Garcia, a welder, do his job for Homeland Security. Since 1985, Garcia has worked patching the holes that are hacked and sliced every day in the border fence.

They cut, he patches. Each day, they play to a draw.

And the line at the bank stretches around the block and across the border.

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Steve Lopez can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com.