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Elizabeth502
Guest
Comfortably in northern New York, you hardly have a clear picture of what has been going on for a minimum of the last 25 years in CA. A convergence of many factors has bankrupt CA, a process which began 35-40 years ago, but magnified and intensified due additionally to the crush of illegal immigration in the last 25. What draws those factors together is, overall, a failure of the state legislature to say No to special interest groups and to say No to unending social services.
The public employee unions are clearly part of the special interest groups. However, the social services have been enormous. CA requires virtually nothing of those who want part of the CA budget (including claims on its nonexistent funds), and provides everything. That “everything” includes repeatedly violating State education law which requires public school instruction in English, but instead collaborating with those districts and publishers who want increasingly more money to support the transformation of a huge underclass of illiterate households into functionally literate members of society.
Most often, legal immigrants from most countries want to learn English if they don’t already have a basic fluency in it – which many of them do, some of them high fluency. The vast majority of those who need translations of everything (at significant cost to the gov’t) are immigrants who are not educated, which are primarily from Latin countries, and to a much lesser degree, from China. While there are immigrants in other Asian countires, particularly Vietnam and Cambodia, who also need translators, their numbers are small compared to those from Latin America. Most East Asian and South Asian immigrants are legal immigrants, and most of them do not need either translators or signfiicant amounts of social services; most often they have a skill or business – however modest – or they are being quickly advanced to CA’s higher education system.
Illegal immigrants in CA have produced a domino effect on economic resources – from education to health care.
You, I, anyone, has logic on their side to blame largely the legislature for the inability to say No, but the political reality is that legislators want to be reelected, and the demographics of constituencies impact their decisions. Had they not been asleep at the wheel while millions of illegals were crossing the southern border, and had the federal gov’t given a rat’s behind about enforcement, there wouldn’t be the critical mass of voters (yes, they vote) as a deciding factor in the equation.
It’s a combination of federal irresponsibility, state irresponsibility, and the amazingly flawed policies and practices of the legislature, which continues to support such irresponsibility on poliitcal grounds. Were CA largely a manufacturing state or of some industry which negatively impacted the state’s richest residents, there would be more political sentiment opposing irresponsible giveaways. But the fact is, the most powerful in the State are the ones least negativey affected (or affected at all) by illegal immigration. They are in government and the tech industry and other rather white-collar professions which illegals have little access to, and further, there are not enough of those with power & influence to swing votes. It’s really a matter of numbers.
So, in a lot of ways, CA is becoming a mini-Mexico in its economic patterns at least, and in its educaitonal patterns to a lesser degree.
You got the “smarts” kiddo, and I, for one, appreciate your intelligent, well-informed opinions.