Watch video: San Diego NBC4-TV does investigative report on illegal alien laborers who squat in San Diego County.

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Comments by Hal Netkin:

As much as we sometimes gripe about having to comply with safety and building codes, we also realize that that's what makes the difference between a first world country and a third world country. But more and more, cities like Los Angeles are edging towards third worldizm by adopting a double code enforcement standard -- one for the middle class, and one for the imported poverty class.

From a March 23, 1997 Los Angeles Daily News story: 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 separate converted garage fires since the previous December, that there would have been an uprising against the Los Angeles 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 social engineer. He decided not to enforce city building codes because as he said, ``We'd be putting 110,000 families out on the street.'' So while middle class homeowners get cited for things like sagging fences, the imported poverty class may squat and violate building and safety codes with impunity.

Wimpy Capt. Boyd Long of the San Diego PD says that he won't evict squatters because it will create an even worse homeless problem, but dismisses any possibility that by allowing mass squatting of people that are not supposed to be in the U.S., that he is virtually allowing the importation of poverty. Allowing mass squatting as long as it is confined and out of sight, the problem will eventually become as bad as it can get.

In the video, Boyd implies that he can't do anything about the problem (presumably because it is a federal problem). But just because the feds don't do their job, doesn't mean that the SDPD shouldn't do theirs. Instead of doing nothing, Boyd could be knocking down ICE's door with demands that they take care of the problem.

Note the same old excuses by the end users who benefit from the illegal labor: "we can't control or influence the hiring practices of our suppliers." Walmart tried using that excuse when it was discovered that their sub-contractor was using illegal labor for janitorial work and was fined $11 million.

There are those who argue that if you legalized those in the video, then the employers would have to treat them in accordance to law. They then would get proper compensation, health insurance, and not have to live in squalor. I've got news for those who believe legalization is the answer: THE HIRING EMPLOYERS ARE BREAKING THE LAW NOW, so what makes anyone think that the employers will suddenly comply with the law once the workers are legalized -- they will simply hire newly arrived illegal aliens who will undercut the legalized ones.

I leave it to your common senses as to what will happen if the new congress passes a so called "comprehensive" immigration reform package to legalize those already in the U.S. and allow the entrance of 20 million more third world temporary (make that permanent) "guest workers" in the next 10 years.

See followup story