Immigration’s implacability

Re “Immigration’s front lines,” editorial, Oct. 24

The Times undermines its case for comprehensive immigration reform by writing: “Arizona’s fast-growing agricultural and construction industries have come to depend on illegal immigrants to fill jobs that legal residents aren’t able or willing to fill.” It’s a myth that Americans won’t do hard labor. The truth is that Americans won’t suffer indignities just to sell their labor at Third World rates. It’s bottom-of-the-barrel wages, not hard work, that U.S. workers reject. Illegal aliens have wiped out African American janitors in Southern California, drywallers throughout California and meatpackers throughout the Midwest, just to name a few displaced U.S. worker segments. By holding down wage growth in labor-intensive industries, illegal immigration serves as a subsidy for low-wage, low-productivity ways of doing business, burdening society with obscene, unfunded, mandated social costs.

MICHAEL SCOTT

Glendora

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Illegal immigrants do not inherently bring problems to the U.S. Rather, they are forced into situations that highlight the negative. Not only that, but for the most part, many of these candidates have never been to the front lines and have no idea what illegal immigration truly does to the individuals involved.

It is time for all these pretentious candidates to do something about the issue and stop sitting around at taxpayers’ expense.

CYNTHIA MONTES

Newhall