Recently Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles announced that the Catholic Church here will ignore any law that would prohibit the helping of illegal immigrants. There is a law pending in the House that would not only make illegal immigration a felony but also punish those that help these people. I have not been a fan of the Cardinal since the sex abuse scandals and the cover ups that have been revealed. I do agree with him on this issue, however. Many people who are against illegal immigrants are conservative Christians. I would ask them to consider whether God would declare immoral someone who crosses a man-made border to take up jobs that nobody else want in order to feed his children. I think God would want us to be compassionate about others who are not as fortunate as us living in this wealthy land. There is no way that God would be against someone helping another human being, no matter what country they are in.

I understand that America has the right to enforce her borders. I also understand that certain areas of the country like California are overcrowded. I also understand that many poor, non-English speaking people moving into certain towns or cities can cause many problems for those areas. I also understand that it is unfair for those legal immigrants who may have to wait longer to get into the U.S. because the country is trying to hold down the total number of immigrants per year. I do understand why some people who are not racists would want to stop illegal immigration. I would like to point out why these people's anger are misdirected at the immigrants and that we really have only ourselves to blame. I would also like to point out unless human nature change dramatically, the solution to this problem will be hard to obtain.

Everyday driving to work, I pass vast agricultural areas here in southern California. I do not believe I have ever seen a black or white person working in these fields. In my practice I treat many people who are farm workers, some of them illegal, I am sure. I have never treated a white or black person who works in the fields. Everyday new hotels are built here in California. I estimate that 95% of the maids that work in these hotels are Hispanic. New houses go up all around me and the gardners who work the yards are almost 100% Hispanic. If somehow all illegal immigration are stopped, we would have to bring in more legal immigrants in to replace them. I don't think you can ever find enough blacks and whites, even those on welfare, to do these work. Nobody who is against illegal immigrants has send his sons to work in the fields or his daughters to clean hotel rooms. So over crowding in California is not the fault of illegal immigrants. Unless we don't want to farm our land or if nobody want to live in California or come here for vacation, the population of California will increase at the same rate. When there is a demand there will be a supply. You can bomb Colombia out of existence, but if we want drugs, somebody will supply it to us. If we don't want to do the work ourselves, somebody will supply the labor.

Is there a difference between legal immigrants or illegal ones? My parents were legal immigrants. It took them more than 10 years to get into the country. My parents are honorable people. They would not do anything that you would consider illegal. Yet if China was attached to the U.S., they would not have waited 10 years to get official approval before coming here. They would have crossed the border like the Mexicans are doing today to make a better living for their children. If they had crossed illegally, they would have done the same jobs, brought up the family the same way and my siblings and I would have become productive citizens as we are today. When you are trying to survive you would not think of crossing a border as an illegal thing to do. Did you see all those people in New Orleans breaking into stores to get food and water after Katrina? You can call them looters but if you are hungry and thirsty, wouldn"t you do the same? How about the old people who buy medication illegally from Mexico or Canada, are they bad people? All of you, unless you are a pure bred native American, have ancestors who are from another country. If your ancestors were desperate they would come in illegally if their country of origin was attached to the U.S. You think if Ireland was connected to the U.S., the Irish wouldn't charge into America during the potato femine? Interesting enough, I read an article that up until recently many Irish came over here illegally by coming on visitors visa and simply stayed in cities like New York or Boston. Some of the Irish-American cops actually would turn a blind eye to this. This trend has come to a halt, not because people feel guilty about it but because the economy in Ireland has improved tremendously so there is actually a reverse migration of the Irish going back to Ireland. So you see, illegal immigration is not something bad people would do but something all of us would do given the same circumstance.

Some people want to put a fence around our Mexican border. They say it can help stop terrorists as well as illegal immigrants. Well, I think terrorists will find it easier to get into Canada instead of Mexico and then cross over a much longer Candadian border with practically no patrol. As far as illegal immigrants are concern, it would slow it down some but won't be effective. People from Cuba and Haiti risk their lives on the rough sea to reach Florida. Chinese people are smuggled in shipping containers across the Pacific. Where there is a will, there is a way. When people are desperate, they will do anything.

The only way to stop this is if demand disappear or if the source of supply dries up. The supply would only be gone if Mexico becomes economically comparable to the U.S. Fat chance that is going to happen any time soon. We can help Mexico with investments but ultimately it will be up to the Mexican government and its business people to improve. One way to cut demand would be to punish the employers harshly so that it would not be worthwhile for them to hire illegals. This can be done but the government has no interest to do so. Like I said, the whole agricultural industry will be destroyed. The consumers will be paying much more for food. You think that the government have the guts to put big business people like officers of Wal-Mart in jail for hiring illegals? I would bet that many politicians from California have or had illegals working for them directly or indirectly. If people like the minutemen are serious about stopping illegal immigration and they are not racists, then they should picket the employers and expose politicians who have hired illegals instead of intimidating poor immigrants.

One possible way to cut demand would be a guest worker program. It would be fair to allow workers to come in to work legally without permanent resident status. Employers can hire these guest workers, pay them fair wages without legal problems. They would be punished if they hire workers without guest permits or try to pay someone below a fair wage. This won't get rid of all the illegals because you can't catch all small businesses and there is always someone who would hire people off the street to work on his yard. The large farms and businesses who violate the rules would be easy to catch if the government is willing. So unless you are ready to shut down all of our farms and close the hotels, a guest worker program must be started soon.

As for the law that would prohibit anyone from aiding an illega immigrant, I would defy it if it passes. As a physician I will treat anyone regardless of where he is from. If someone catches an infectious disease, he can pass it to anyone else regardless of that person's citizenship. Not only would it be inhumane to not treat someone but it would be a health hazard for the whole population. I agree with the Catholic Church that we should help our fellow man and not demonize him for doing something we would do if we were in the same situation.

A recent proposal in Hawthorne, a city in Los Angeles county, would require business signs be in English. This is another example of government officials being busy bodies, wasting taxpayers' money. It is none of the government's business what language one chooses to use to attract customers. If a business depends on English speaking customers, it will only hurt itself by not using English. Throughout the world, business that want to attract English speaking tourists have signs in English. A Hawthorne councilwoman said that she is not bias against immigrants but want to help them. The best way the government can help businesses is by putting up as little restrictions on them as possible. Let them have the freedom to run their business as they see fit.

People who believe in "English only" are not necessary racist. Sometimes I agree with them. For example, we don't need voting ballots in languages ranging from Spanish to Chinese to Tagalog plus many others as they do here in LA county. Since citizenship supposedly require knowledge of English, I don't see why we should spend money to print ballots in so many different languages. Even people who are native English speakers vote infrequently and, judging by recent voting results, poorly. So let us just have one ballot for everybody. The people who truly care about the issues will vote in any language.

The situation with the business signs, however, is different than that of ballots. The rest of the world is learning English in greater number than ever. While in the U.S., the most diverse nation on earth, we are worrying about different languages on business signs? The children of immigrants will speak English anyway and become Americanized. I don't want to walk down every street in America and see signs like McDonald and Subway only. Signs in different languages are far more interesting and make America different from most other nations. None of these languages will ever take over for English in this country. We don't need busy bodies scaring us.