Anyone else ready to leave CA?

[vfrpilot]

Not for me to figure out the ILLEGAL immigration issue. I only am saying it's one issue why we left the area. You need to live here for a couple of years and get back to me. My wife was sympathetic to illegals before moving to San Marcos. After living here 14 years she changed her mind. I'm sorry, but if someone wants to come work and live, just do it legally. Lots of people do it.
My dad was more conservative about illegals than I am. Funny though cause he was a Democrat.
BTW- they are not all children. 33 percent of our prison population are illegals, there for crimes, not because of immigration violation. I think the percentage is higher for SoCal

[greatbasinguide]

You have to watch out for the NewsMax anti immigrant group statistics, here are the actual California numbers for August 2006 38% are latino, it would be racist to call them illegals. You will notice that 17% are foreignborn,, that would be all races,, 17% You will notice also that incarceration rates are much lower for foreign born than for US born.

38% are Latino, 29% are African American, and 6% are of another race or ethnicity (Figure 1). Seventeen percent of prisoners are foreign-born; incarceration rates are much lower for foreign-born adults (297 per 100,000) than for U.S.-born adults (813 per 100,000).

[speedoflight]

This is not to hijack the thread and turn this into an immigration discussion. Nor is it meant to diss immigrants and nor should comments be construed as being racist, xenophobic or a complete inappreciativeness of immigrants. Writing back and arguing on points on the obvious fact that America is an immigrant country is not helping anyone solve issues. This is purely a discussion and being very honest about observations.

You are very right that immigrants of the past tried to do things very differently than immigrants today (illegal and legal). Southern Cal's immigrant problems are quite different from Northern Cal's. In Southern Cal and Central Cal, you mainly deal with illegal immigrants. In Northern Cal, it's legal aliens who come mainly because of the technology business in the Silicon Valley. Demographically, they are very different but in some areas, they cross into similar grounds. Technology companies in Silicon Valley import many Indian workers through H1B, L1B programs. Visa holders are allowed to bring their spouses and children, provided that the spouses do not work or can attain their own H1B/L1B visa. After x years, they are eligible to apply for permanent residency (the process is very tedious). After which, they can now sponsor other immediate family members. Many Indian and Chinese workers sponsor their entire family in India/China/Taiwan/etc. over here. Unlike the original worker, their family members are typically not as educated and/or older. Given how incredibly expensive it is to live in the Bay Area, they are often not able to support these family members and thus put them on welfare and other social programs. They insert their parents or family members into HUD and/or Section 8 assisted housing and transition the weight of supporting their parents to the taxpayers/state govt. Since these family members have paid zero taxes to the system, they drain the system to the core and deny admission to eligible citizens who have paid into social security, taxes, etc. The children of these H1B/L1B and even new immigrants attend your local schools. Socially, this new wave of workers and immigrants do not try to assimilate for they did not come here with the mindset to build the US or assimilate/embrace American culture or values. They are not political or social refugees. They came here purely to work and to get as rich as they can. This is why when you talk to previous immigrants (of any race), you'd often hear of their dismay of the behavior of this new wave of aliens who do not give. They take, take and take and expect everyone else to give in to their ways. There are modern day immigrants who do come here and try so hard to make a difference but they are a very rare breed. Take for example Michelle Kwan, the ice skater. She was born to immigrants from HK. Her mother took on a second job and her father worked extra hours to finance her skating & coaching fees. The family even sold their house to finance her skating fees. When Kwan was 10, her family could no longer afford a coach, and they were offered financial assistance by the LA Figure Skating Club. The rest is history, as she grew up and represented the US in the Olympics. Her family believed in building, contributing and the result of which is the pride we all feel as Americans when she skated. We need more immigrant families like Kwan's if we as an immigrant nation hope to continue with our forward momentum, dynamism as a nation and for us to continue to thrive on the world stage in the arts and sciences. We need to be a country that has sound values, where everyone, immigrants or non to contribute to build and make a difference. We don't need more people to come and take, take, take. This country once underwent a period when European conquerors/outsiders came to take without permission and it created a net loss for all. Takers do not build.

Originally Posted by vfrpilot

You can't compare today's immigration issues with the previous century. People then did not come in by the millions, have babies, demand welfare, drivers licenses, refuse to learn English, and generally refuse to assimulate into the American culture. If a person sees that the laws of this country are impotent, then why bother with any of em? Pick and choose only the ones you agree with. But this is an issue for another forum.
This thread asks for reasons to leave. There are reasons to leave or stay anywhere. We choose to leave. One of the biggest problems for us is the immigration impact on the schools where we lived. In the San Diego area ,it's mainly illegals from Mexico. In our school district, 34 percent of the elementary age kids could not speak English. There is no way you're going to send your kindergartener in those conditions and have them work out an assimulation plan. Just the language barrier is bad enough. The cultural gap is huge, especially when parents are upset if their kids speak English.

[NYSD1995]

Guys, this thread has gone off-topic.