Monterey Park : Immigrants, Trash Linked
Mayor Barry L. Hatch, during a City Council discussion on how to solve Los Angeles County’s problems with trash disposal, offered a novel solution: halt immigration.
“I’m not saying all our trash problems are going to be solved by controlling immigration,” Hatch said Tuesday after the Monday night council meeting. “But I feel that controlling immigration, illegal and legal, would definitely have a relaxing effect.”
Of illegal immigrants, he said, “every one of these individuals create additional trash.”
In previous statements before the council, Hatch has linked the immigration issue to problems of local and regional overcrowding of schools, streets, prisons, hospitals and the welfare system. He is a member of American Citizens Together, an Alhambra-based group that advocates a temporary ban on immigration as a way to allow the nation time to assess the immigration issue.
Hatch’s comment came during a presentation by a representative of BFI Waste Systems, which operates the Sunshine Canyon Landfill in the Santa Susana Mountains between Granada Hills and Santa Clarita. The firm is soliciting countywide support for its plans to expand the landfill.
No one on the council responded to Hatch’s comments.
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