The great difference that has separated American cities like Los Angeles from third world cities, was the regular enforcement of building and zoning laws. But by putting out the welcome mat to the growing illegal alien population, our city officials are virtually importing poverty. The city thus found it necessary to set up a double standard of building and zone enforcement -- one standard for the middle class homeowners, and another for penury struck third world immigrants (mostly illegal aliens).

In the early morning in March of 1997, Cristina Fierros saw her illegally converted garage apartment burn - and she grieved for the three people who died there. You would have thought that with eight people having died in two converted garage fires since the previous December, that there would have been an uprising against the Department of Building and Safety -- but there wasn't. Instead, David Keim, head of the department's Code Enforcement Bureau, who estimated at the time, that 50,000 to 100,000 people were living in illegally converted garages across Los Angeles, decided to abandon his job of code enforcement to virtually become a sociologist. He decided not to enforce city building codes because as he said, ``We'd be putting 110,000 families out on the street.''

Keim doesn't want to enforce the law against squatting for the same reason -- he doesn't want to put anyone out on the street.

One might argue that it would be inhumane to enforce the law, but now the mayor wants to import more poverty to the city. Ultimately, the dwindling Los Angeles middle class will become extinct leaving only the rich and the poor.