Letters to the Editor: California’s economy needs immigrants. What about the environment?

To the editor: If we use economic activity as our only metric, we get a very distorted picture of the actual effects of the massive immigration of the last few years. (“Why California’s surge in immigration is lifting our economy,” July 31)

Your article does mention “short-term public costs,” but it completely ignores long-term environmental and quality-of-life effects. While Californians are being warned that our lifestyle is unsustainable — and that we should give up our gas stoves, our gas-powered cars, our single-family zoning and our environmental regulations on development, and we must conserve water — your article is telling us that adding more people to the state will boost the economy.

I have lived in California for more than 70 years and have seen huge growth in the economy and the population, but it has made California a less pleasant place to live. I don’t think more immigration will reverse that trend.

John La Grange, Solana Beach

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To the editor: I want to thank The Times for featuring a front-page article that is positive on immigration. It casts a bright light on the economic benefits that immigrants bring to America. Immigrants also pay into Social Security, keeping it solvent, and they help decrease inflation.

Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris need to embrace immigration and all the benefits it brings to our economy. Human lives are priceless, growth and progress are inevitable and, if we want to keep the economy moving forward, we need those precious lives to meet the demand for jobs. We need immigration reform and immigrants.

As Harris has said, we are not going back.

Anastacio Vigil, Santa Monica

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To the editor: Your article reports that immigration is a net positive for the U.S. bottom line. But apparently, you didn’t summarize the entire Congressional Budget Office report upon which this article is based.

Here is an excerpt from the section of the report titled, “The Budgetary Effects of Unauthorized Immigrants”:

“The tax revenues that unauthorized immigrants generate for state and local governments do not offset the total cost of services provided to those immigrants. Most of the estimates found that even though unauthorized immigrants pay taxes and other fees to state and local jurisdictions, the resulting revenues offset only a portion of the costs incurred by those jurisdictions for providing services.”

There’s also this: “Federal aid programs offer resources to state and local governments that provide services to unauthorized immigrants, but those funds do not fully cover the costs incurred by those governments.”

Yes, managed legal immigration may be a net positive, but you must consider the costs of services for millions of unauthorized immigrants.

Lynn Miller, Pacific Palisades