For now, no new immigrants

Californians of diverse backgrounds are concerned about deteriorating education, increasing congestion, huge budget deficits, continuing layoffs, and high housing costs, among other problems. Can our leaders effectively address such concerns without simultaneously urging President Bush and Congress to adopt a timeout from mass immigration?

In the 1950s, California’s educational system was one of the finest in this country. Sadly, California’s educational achievements in math ranked near the bottom in 2000 when compared with that of the rest of the country. This was despite the fact that the state’s overall budget for education, $49 billion in 2002-2001, exceeded that of any other state by far.

Many of our schools are overwhelmed with exploding immigration-related enrollments, even though bonds worth billions of dollars have been approved in recent years to build more classrooms. Immigration advocates claim that California’s Proposition 13 has curbed the property-tax revenues used to fund education. Has increased immigration improved or exacerbated the situation? Presently, many natives and legal immigrants are out of work. Are increasing property taxes and passing additional billion-dollar bonds real solutions to our problems?

In recent years, nearly 600,000 people have been added to California’s population annually, and all of them need housing. Much of the population increase is immigration-related. Furthermore, recent news reports indicated that in the last decade, California experienced a 30-percent increase in poverty that was largely due to immigration. Why continue an immigration policy that brings large numbers of students, drivers, job seekers and users of services to this state while our infrastructure and budgets are being overwhelmed?

Many individual immigrants have contributed to the United States, just as many babies have brought joy to parents. But, if a mother’s house was just destroyed by a major earthquake and she was being overwhelmed with many urgent tasks, it would not be wise for her to have more babies. Similarly, California has not cared for many poor or unemployed natives and legal immigrants adequately. It would not be responsible to invite more foreign-born to live the American dream.

According to a Zogby poll commissioned last year by the Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America, 62 percent of Californian voters, including 66 percent of Hispanics, believed that continued immigration made education reform more difficult. In addition, 62 percent of blacks and 34 percent of Hispanic voters believed that a three-year moratorium on legal immigration would benefit the state.

Therefore, a moratorium on mass immigration has minority support. It is a necessary component of real solutions to California’s problems.