To the Editor:
Rebecca Liddicoat's column supporting California's Proposition 187 (Nov. 21), which deprives noncitizens of prenatal care, education and other benefits was wrong on all counts.
Liddicoat claimed that "anywhere from a threefold to fivefold difference in cost and contribution" results from the presence of illegal immigrants in California.
Does her unnamed source calculate the immigrants' value as consumers who spend money on California goods and, incidentally, pay sales taxes thereon, contrary to her statement that noncitizen residents "don't pay taxes"?
Does it attempt to reckon the future cost to the U.S. as increasing numbers of the children of "illegal families" turn to crime upon growing up, [since they would be] deliberately denied education by a society in which they have no choice but to exist?
Does it calculate how much "contribution," in the form of money saved by U.S. consumers, is attributable to the manufacture in Mexico of cheap goods, from cars to cassettes, under those very conditions of worker desperation which motivate illegal immigration to the U.S.?
It seems that our map of economic reality must be made exquisitely narrow and self-serving before Proposition 187 comes up "fair" even in strictly fiscal terms.
Liddicoat also overlooks the fact that illegal residents "don't pay taxes" precisely because the U.S. will not allow them to. If they could get green cards, work for legal wages and pay legal taxes, they gladly would. It would mean more money in their pockets and no more living in fear of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
But there's little chance of that. California's economy is dependent on the sub-legal exploitation wages paid to illegal workers.
The morality of Liddicoat's argument is as frayed as its economics. To take the problem's simplest aspect: the children of California's "illegal families" have no choice about whether to live in California and cannot leave. Proposition 187's supporters would sacrifice these persons in order to send a message to Mexico -- "don't come."
As long as immigrants can earn American dollars, they are better off than they would be in the desperate slums surrounding the American-owned maquiladoras (factory zones) south of the border or on the streets of Mexico City. Proposition 187 will cause rage and suffering, but it can't even come close to deterring those desperate enough to risk vigilantes, the INS, exposure and drowning to cross the border.
To those who "question the humanity" of Proposition 187, Liddicoat replies that, there are millions of sorry people all over the world who California cannot help, so why should it help the ones right in California? We are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of choices that are ours to make, and are not responsible for [the consequences] of choices that are not ours to make.
In particular, California cannot save the world single-handedly and is therefore not responsible for doing so; it can save the people who live within its borders, and is therefore responsible for doing so. The rest of the country should chip in too . . . since we are supposed to be a Union.
Liddicoat claims that Proposition 187 is not racist because some Mexican-Americans, blacks, Asians and poor people also voted for it. Yet, notwithstanding, the bill's appeal certainly is racist.
It happens also to be robustly xenophobic and selfish, therefore broad enough in appeal to garner wide support. As always, many people think only to kick the ladder away once they're up themselves -- no surprises there.
Regardless of the motivational question, Proposition 187 should be opposed simply because of the concrete injustices and cruelties which it explicitly enacts.
