Partners in an Immigration Quandary

“We’re Partners in This Crime,” the headline on Andres Martinez’s May 18 Commentary column, is absolutely correct. As for solutions, they begin by acknowledging that President Bush’s “willing workers” concept is little more than a national job fair for businesses and private residents that don’t want to pay living wages.

A “willing worker” is generally a desperately poor, unskilled individual from the Third World seeking almost any kind of work. A “willing employer” is generally a mercenary and conniving firm or individual offering employment to willing workers at non-living wages and with terrible working conditions.

This is a marriage made in hell, on the backs of innocent U.S. workers, taxpayers, who are forced to pay $8.7 billion annually in unfunded mandates to support 2.9 million illegal aliens, just here in California.

Whenever we hear schmaltzy blather about the “jobs nobody wants,” what’s really at stake are “jobs that pay less than most Americans need to support their families.”

The solutions to this complex controversy begin by telling the truth about such issues as the reality that no technologically advanced industrial nation like the U.S. that has 27 million illiterate adults need have any fear about a shortage of unskilled workers.

Michael Scott

Glendora

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When is The Times Commentary section going to start practicing what it preaches and stop using the insulting term “gringo” when describing people of Anglo background, the latest printing of this despicable term occurring in Martinez’s “We’re Partners in This Crime” article?

I cannot imagine the hue and cry if an Anglo person used any term other than a L.A. Times/ACLU-approved politically correct term when describing any person belonging to any of the franchised minorities. Enough already, or do you not understand hypocrisy?

Enrico Mutascio

Palm Springs

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Martinez’s commentary proves The Times is capable of publishing a balanced opinion. Congratulations! A major weakness of those arguing for unlimited illegal immigration is the lack of acknowledgment that illegal immigration imposes a secondary cost that is impossible to quantify.

For example, several years ago, when the Anaheim School District had calculated its cost of educating illegal immigrant children at $30 million, and no other governmental body would reimburse the district, critics focused on the expenditure of funds. No one asked what that $30 million could have done for those children who were in the school legally. Could the overall educational level of the students been raised? Or could the opportunity to unleash a genius been missed?

Clearly, consideration of the money spent is only a primary issue; but the lost-opportunity cost may damage society far more.

Gerald Chong

El Segundo