Steve Lopez: Escondido on the warpath

Not since the fires last year has it been this hot in Escondido, where city officials have saddled up the posse to go after illegal immigrants, fanning the flames in the process. Anna Gorman’s Sunday story has drawn hundreds of passionate reader comments on The Times website, most of them applauding the city crackdown, and many of them hysterical and racist.

I can understand a law-abiding citizen’s problem with the very idea of illegal immigration, as well as questions about the cost versus the benefits. What I don’t understand is why the vitriol is so often directed at illegal immigrants themselves. They’re only doing what any poor, desperate person from a corrupt and economically ravaged country would do in the same situation: Come to a country where employers crave them, where residents demand rock-bottom prices for goods and services, and where a cowardly president and Congress look the other way for the most part because they are maddeningly incapable of finding the courage or the humanity to pass sensible immigration reform.

Yell at me now if you want, but I might not hear the shouting. I’m heading down to Escondido to see the posse in action.

Read Steve Lopez's recent columns.

Comments

[anandine]

Here's my compromise: For people illegally in the US now, let them stay as permanent residents (with a green card) but with no possibility of becoming a citizen.

Conservatives should like it because there is no path to citizenship. Liberals should like it, because nobody gets deported, no families broken up, statuses are formalized.

[Brittanicus]

Neither political party has anything new to offer, relating to illegal immigration. The Dem's and even McCain are pandering to seditious entities like La Raza, that are certainly anti-sovereignty.

Legal Hispanic are just as frustrated because they just want to assimilate, live their lives and stay out of the illegal immigration issue. Both Obama and McCain would bring us a new AMNESTY. Already with have over 315 million people in this country, but within twenty years we could add another 125 million? http://www.earthtimes.org/

Were are we going to get the extra energy, as our population escalates to a 435 million? We have congestion now, growing pollution and a major issue with oil? The signal our political parties are sending to the poor of the world, that if you can smuggle yourself across the border, then American taxpayers will support your needs.

Demand the leading Democrats sponsor the Federal SAVE ACT (H.R.4088) because after the election, AMNESTY is a sure thing. Uncensored facts can be found at NUMBERSUSA. Decide for yourself?

[MB]

yo steve...while you're in E-town...see if you can find the guy in the article that had trouble finding day labor construction work had 5 children and lived 2 families to a house...

AND ASK HIM WHY THE H*LL WE MIDDLE CLASS AMERICAN TAXPAYERS HAVE TO PAY FOR THE COST OF HIM AND HIS FAMILY BEING HERE WHILE OUR CHILDREN CANNOT GET STUDENT AID FOR COLLEGE.

you've got to be kidding me. what right does an illegal immigrant have to come here and have 5 children!!!!! he should be ashamed for the burden he puts on us americans.

[Living in OC]

Mr Lopez, speaking of hysteria: "Escondido on the warpath" " saddled up the posse", sounds like a bit of hyperbole on your part.
In fact, what escondido is doing is removing unlicensed drivers from the roads, enforcing laws against illegal apartments and overcrowding in residences, and keeping streets free of illegally parked vehicles. All of which may apply to persons of any race. What is exactly your objection?
The so-called 'vitriol' of the message board is directed at the group of people who have these problems at an extremely disproportionate rate.
As far as them escaping from a corrupt country, why stop with Mexico, why not allow the 3 or 4 billion (with a B) from the whole 3rd world come to the US. Maybe you'll let them live in your neighborhood. I wonder what our tax burden would be like to provide for all of their needs.

[Rachel]

Mr. Lopez, why don't you take these illegal immigrant families into your home and neighborhood? The people coming to America from south of the border are poor, yes that is true, but they are taking advantage of the so called "free services" that we the poor taxpayers are footing the bill. We simply cannot afford to support the world anymore. Take a drive through Escondido when the schools let out. 99.9 % are hispanic. You will see plenty of hispanic mothers surrounded by 4-5 children and with one on the way. Can they afford to support these children in San Diego? NO. Do you really expect the taxpayers to keep paying for these illegal immigrants??? You are delusional.

[buz]

Healthcare in S Cal is on the verge of collapse largely due to the fact that we have absorbed millions of Mexico's poor who do not pay thieir medical bills. Few specialists are willing to cover the ERs around here because they don't get paid. Or they get Medi-Cal rates which are comically low and not worth the gas it takes to drive in during the middle of the night. As the LA Times staff knows all too well, "someone has to pay for all this"

[Malby]

Steve: Really disappointed in your descent into cheap rhetoric on an issue that is blazingly real. Your take is really unfair. Posse? Saddle up? When a bunch of hardworking ordinary folks, many Hispanic in heritage, get to a nice neighborhood with nice schools, invest in a house and settle down, only to see the influx of these "broken window" issues for a decade without government action, your kid's school suffers, your housing values deteriorate, . . . .you get mad. How many of the 600+ people were crazy racists? Only a handful, and they'll come out the woodwork no matter what. The TImes and its staff--like our elected politicians--have ignored the widespread consensus of its middle-class (former) readers that this has gotten out of hand. Anyone who opposes illegal immigration on the grand scale that we have experienced is gratuitously called nativist or racist, wholly inaccurately in 90% of the cases. We don't dislike Mexicans, or Central Americans, or Poles, or Martians, for that mattter; we resent being thrust back into the Third World after having worked so hard to "make it" here. When did three adults, five kids in a 2 bdrm apt, or families living in garages without toilets or other running water seem like a good thing to you? Why is an unlicensed uninsured driver hitting my car (or killing my neighbor) and evading all responsibility a good thing? Why are the rules being bent for this group of people? Everyone who pretends that the USA can absorb all the world's poor should at the very least take one of those families into its home. That would be a first step. Oh, and the Catholic Church (my church) could educate the illegals' kids for free and give them free treatment at Catholic hospitals.

[Todd]

"They’re only doing what any poor, desperate person...would do in the same situation." BILLIONS of people are in the same situation. Why should we favor Latinos over the rest of the world?

Oh, I know. Because YOU yourself are Latino. Don't bother telling us how to think when clearly you have an ethnic bias.

Bottom line: they have their own country. I'm sorry that it may not offer the same opportunities that America does, but I believe Mexico can be changed for the better from within.

[MaryJ]

I basically no longer pay any attention to opinions on immigration from anyone with a "z" at the end of their name.

[Becky Lewis]

Steve, get a grip on reality.

In my neighborhood, the cost benefit and the fact that they're illegal is just icing on the cake.

We have so many problems due to the illegals.

Our schools have declined and are overcrowded.

We now have gangs, which the police have noted are made mostly of illegals.

We have soiled diapers, corona bottles, latino calling cards thrown constantly in our streets.

We have excessive overcrowding with junk cars in the front lawn, uncut grass, trash in the yards, and no maintenance or upkeep of the properties.

We have a huge increase in crimes by Latinos (many of which are illegal).

Try living with this. You wake up one day and find this happening in your neighborhood.

Then realize they are here illegally.

Get a grip on reality.

[Ed Penniman]

When reading these typle of articals, all the writers forget what the term "illegal " means. To put it simply, they are BREAKING THE LAW.

If you don't like the law, get it changed. As long as a law is in effect, the ploice have a responcibility to enforce it, even though they don't.

[Emerson]

Whine, whine, whine . . . they're all criminals, they're ruining our country, sob, sob. Get a grip. If we didn't want economically disadvantaged Latinos coming here from Central America we should have kept out of Central America ourselves instead of supporting every corrupt regime down there.

If we didn't want Salvadorans coming up here to mow our lawns we shouldn't have supplied d'Aubisson with the money and arms to kill them all; if we don't like Nicaraguans coming here to do whatever we shouldn't have propped up the Somozas while they pillaged the country for fifty years or so; maybe we shouldn't have engineered coups in Honduras or Guatemala to keep the banana pickers' wages down. When you go down into another country to make sure people can't survive on their wages, why are you surprised when they come up here to try it?

We are always shocked that our actions have consequences; well, we're idiots and deserve to be treated like idiots.

Maybe you have a different type of immigrant in the golden west than here in New York but based on the comments I read above, almost any illegal immigrant I know here would make a better American than any one of you jokers. Talk about venom!

Two suggestions at least: read more American history and cultivate a sense of the ironic, Escondido isn't exactly Middle English for Land of the Vikings.