Illegal Workers and Amnesty

Re “All Decry System of Illegal Workers, While All Use It,� Opinion, June 25:

What Paul Montgomery has to say about illegal immigration didn’t go far enough into the U.S. implicit and complicit relationship with illegal immigrants (or more rightly termed undocumented immigrants because there are no illegal human beings). No industry wants to give up the cheap labor and wider profit margins that undocumented immigrants represent.

Immigration is a global and a local issue and is inextricably tied to capitalism and the bottom line; because of that there will always be undocumented immigrants moving across borders in hopes for a better life. When are people who decry the system of illegal workers while using the fruits of their labor going to realize that they can’t have their cake and eat it too? They can’t have cheap labor, low prices and a robust economy and at the same time deny basic human rights, necessities and protections to the very people who are the backbone of the U.S. and California economies.

All those who don’t want undocumented immigrants here in the United States have to do is pass a law raising the fine for employing undocumented immigrants to $50,000 for each undocumented immigrant employed and then enforce it. Don’t worry, it will never happen; this country is too hypocritical. They’ll just continue to scapegoat undocumented immigrants for social problems they have no control over while the real threat of unbridled capitalism wreaks the real havoc.

REUBEN M. QUESADA

Santa Ana

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Assemblyman Bob Margett, in his June 26 commentary, correctly states that Cardinal Roger Mahony is wrong to call for an amnesty for illegal immigrants now residing in the U.S. He also indicates that such an amnesty would send the wrong signal to others around the world who would follow. What he left unsaid, however, is the fact that another amnesty, plus our present immigration policy, would continue our inexorable march toward nearly a half-billion people by 2050.

The real question is whether we will be able to maintain our quality of life with nearly twice the population.

BYRON SLATER

San Diego