Glendora, CA 91741

April  17, 2008

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa

200 North Spring Street

Los Angeles, CA 90012

Dear Mayor Villaraigosa:Re: L.A. street gangs & illegal immigration

I’ve been following your efforts to combat street gang violence in Los Angeles; - - as well as your March 27, 2008 letter to Homeland Secretary Chertoff, - to quote, "In these industries, including most areas of manufacturing, even the most scrupulous and responsible employers have no choice but to rely on workers whose documentation, while facially valid, may raise questions about their lawful presence."

I find it a spellbinding figment of one’s mindset to espouse that, “even the most scrupulous and responsible employers” have no choice but breaking our laws to remain in business. That’s like saying that even the most scrupulous and responsible political candidates have no choice but telling lies to get elected. Never mind that illegal immigrants act as subsidies to businesses that employ unskilled workers, holding down labor costs while taxpayers pick-up the horrendous costs of providing services to a much larger poor and low-income population.

It seems as if most of your attention is focused upon curtailing street gangs from recruiting new members, while virtually ignoring deporting gang members who’re in this country illegally. All that’s basically needed regarding identifying gang members for deportation is allowing the LAPD to access ICE’s data base, when appropriate. If there’s a match regarding a previous deportation, or other references of being here illegally, that’s sufficient grounds to notify ICE. What more do you need when an illegal gang member is discovered? It’s likely that you deliberately didn’t push this choice of action for ideological & political reasons. It’s malfeasant to ignore the opportunities of deporting illegal gang members, while only concentrating upon gang banger recruitment.

In spite of your comments about the “contributions” of indocumentados, let’s look at some of the horrors of illegal immigration. We’re heading into a recession, something that doesn’t seem to bother you regarding unskilled & unemployed American workers. According to the July 2007 U.S. Census Bureau, there are 54,277,000 million Americans, ages 16-64, who aren’t in the labor force. This includes 23 million "non-college educated" American working-age adults who, for a variety of reasons, don’t have a job. Narrowing down these segments, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of those actively seeking employment who can’t find a full-time job in today’s economy, there are 14 million Americans. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, there are 11.6 million less-educated adult immigrants in the labor force, nearly half of whom are estimated to be illegal aliens.

2 million -- The increase in the number of Americans without a high school degree who became jobless between 2000 and 2005. According to a 2008 study by America's Promise Alliance, more than a million students are dropping out of our high schools each year.

1.5 million -- The number of immigrants without a high school degree who were imported by Congress between 2000 and 2005 to compete with unskilled  Americans.

Using three year old data, here in California, if we add-up the expenses of just the basic components of illegal immigration for a single year, - - K-12 education for 430,000 kids, pre-natal & delivery costs in county hospitals for 84,000 illegal moms, monthly subsidies to these same illegal moms for their new U.S. citizens, emergency health care costs borne by the State’s major counties, and the costs to incarcerate about 24,000 illegal alien felons in state/county prisons, we’re at $9.5 billion, (net) year after year after year, and climbing.

Los Angeles County's underground cash economy is a financial disaster, with an estimated 28% of the workforce (mostly illegal immigrants) paid in cash, thus depriving the safety net of an estimated $1.1 billion annually. 

California leads the nation in suffocating under the burden of medically uninsured people. Los Angeles County recently voted to close 16 community clinics, and reduced by 25% funding for its network of private clinics partnering with the County. In addition to this, within the last decade, 52 emergency rooms and 17 trauma centers (13 within the last 16 months) throughout Southern California have closed their doors, all because they couldn’t afford to keep them open because of the exponentially increasing numbers of uninsured patients that include critical-masses of illegal aliens. The County’s population grew 7.4 percent in the last decade; a period in which 36 hospitals closed their doors. Additionally, 81 hospitals no longer have emergency rooms. Los Angeles County spent about $340 million in 2003 providing health care to illegal immigrants, according to a report from the Department of Health Services. So bad is the crisis here that some patients must wait 4 days for a hospital bed, up to two years

for gallbladder surgery, and some even die while waiting for these beds.

The statewide system is "on the brink of collapse," according to a 2003 study by the California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems. The study warned that thousands of workers will lose their jobs and hospitals will close if the split between rising costs and declining revenues keeps growing.

In February 2008, Los Angeles County announced that it may close most of its health care clinics because of a $195 million budget resulting from 400,000 annual patients, two-thirds of whom are non-insured, a figure that includes critical masses of illegal aliens.

The federal government’s failure to enforce our immigration laws extends illegal immigration to a milestone of federal malfeasance rarely seen in public service. Your ideological pirouettes and bungee summersaults to capitalize on federal malfeasance by end runs around our laws to flood this land with millions of illegal aliens, with little or no concern for those Americans already here, makes you an outcast & a pariah to a society founded upon “consent of the governed”. Why should California & Los Angeles go deeply into debt partially because of $ billions of unfunded mandate taxes that rip-us-off against our wills to subsidize a festering open sore?

Hopefully the words of Abraham Lincoln will eventually become your Waterloo, - “If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but can't fool all the people all the time.”

Sincerely,

(signed)

Michael Scott