Letters: On immigration, too much misinformation

Letters: On immigration, too much misinformation

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe speaks during a press conference at U.S. Postal Service headquarters Feb. 6, 2013 in Washington, D.C.

MISSION VIEJO, Vincent Principale: In his opinion favoring amnesty for 11 million or more illegal immigrants, columnist Jay Chen's main question that arises can be reduced to the following: In view of our current economy and a growing indebtedness in the trillions, is the amnesty created by the Gang of Eight (its troubling details having already been made public) beneficial to the American taxpayer [“Need for immigration reform,” Opinion, Oct. 2]?

Let's consider a simple “yes” or “no,” and get on with it, because it is the middle-class, taxpaying Americans, who will be affected if we include the many unemployed illegals among amnesty recipients. Don't dismiss that millions of illegals have been, and are, receiving benefits, filling our emergency rooms, crowding our jails, receiving food stamps and overburdening many primary schools.


ORANGE, Karl Baysinger: It is maddening, as a law-abiding California resident, to continue to hear some California farmers bemoan the fact that they have a labor shortage and a need to legalize much of their current immigrant workforce [“Labor shortages, higher costs hit farmers,” News, Sept. 27].

There is already a program in place, called the H-2A visa, that allows for foreign labor to work in our fields seasonally for up to one year. My intuition tells me that they don't want to pay higher wages to attract more workers.

Postal business killers

ROSSMOOR, T. Murphy: Lawmakers wish to revamp the U.S. Postal system [“Lawmakers press for postal revamping,” Sept. 27].

Really? One issue under discussion for several years, and now under consideration by Postal Director Patrick Donahoe, is the recommendation to increase first-class postage by three cents, to 49 cents, and increase bulk-mail pricing by 5.9 percent.

There is no better way to take more patrons out of a business format and into the digital format than to raise the cost of a first-class stamp.

Instead of taking so much time to discuss the issues, that never will be agreed upon because of unions with their own vested interests, a business decision needs to be made by someone who can look at the bottom line. In most businesses, when the bottom line is red, the owner of the company says we can't continue to operate this way. But with a federal bureaucracy, it takes years to come to a decision, or no decision is ever made, and the taxpayer loses.

If there could be a decision to stop Saturday delivery on Jan. 1, 2014, savings would begin immediately. Yes, there would be less hours for those letter carriers. But that is life.

Then, take it a step further. Make sure that letter carriers are allowed to share the costs of their benefits, as the private sector does, by offering them a flex account where they decide what is important for their needs and apply those flex dollars toward that coverage. Every worker gets a set amount, if they want a higher benefit then kick in the funds from their pay. Individuals do not have to do without, but they do have to decide what they are willing to pay for and stop expecting that others should pay the cost of what they want.

Business decisions must be made in order to cover costs of service. A bureaucracy causes business to go away.

Shutdown blame

WESTMINSTER, George A. Kuck: The practice of the government in the past was to submit separate funding bills for each of the departments.

In the past 20 years, “omnibus” spending bills have become the norm.

With the submittal of separate bills by the House to open the government agencies closed by the partial government shutdown, the Republicans are again returning to the previous way of conducting business – which worked very well.

The Democratic-controlled Senate's refusal to consider the bills to fund the Veterans Affairs and National Institutes of Health should now put the onus of the shutdown on the Democrats and President Barack Obama. They have shown that they want it all their way and refuse to negotiate with the Republican leaders.

Isn't Obama's refusal to negotiate and the granting of exemptions to crony-capitalist friends a characteristic of a dictator? He is an elected president and should behave as such.



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