Posted on 12/01/2002 8:51:10 AM PST by RICK77
EDITORIAL A Tragedy of Two Cities Times Headlines
Los Angeles' Toilet-to-Tap Fear Factor
Los Angeles is home to multimillionaire movie execs and billionaire developers. When it comes to the overall value of its goods and services, L.A. County does better than Switzerland, Sweden or Austria. It is also the poverty capital of the nation.
To measure the widening gap between the region's haves and have-nots, the United Way of Greater Los Angeles crunched numbers from dozens of government and private studies. Its recently released report, "A Tale of Two Cities: Promise and Peril in Los Angeles County," found that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
Everyone is familiar with studies showing that wages increase with education and English fluency, but lack of formal learning is not the sole reason for the gap. The United Way study found that wages for those with the lowest level of education are actually declining.
Some industries never recovered from the recession of the early 1990s. Many high-paying aerospace jobs disappeared for good. Seven of the 10 fastest-growing occupations -- retail sales clerk, security guard and cashier among them -- pay less than $25,000 a year.
An estimated 811,000 residents work off the books as day laborers or nannies, earning substandard wages and no benefits. Almost 2 million people -- more than in any other metropolitan area -- eke out an existence on less than $18,100 a year, the federally defined poverty level for a family of four. The majority of these in the greater LA are of Latin American ancestary. The burden is even greater in this area, topped only by New York City and San Francisco in cost of living.
In a time when lack of education increasingly means a life of poverty, over 30% of county residents over 25 have never finished high school. Among the 36% who are foreign-born in L.A. County, many are immigrants from Latin American countries with very low levels of education.
The worst-case scenario is that Los Angeles becomes a city divided between ghettos and gated communities (very likely). But the United Way study also paints a city of promise, where immigrants contribute youth and vitality to the workforce and forge a multiethnic, multilingual version of Los Angeles that has strong links to an ever more global economy. The way to get from peril to promise is for all of Los Angeles to recognize the benefits of narrowing the rift between very rich and very poor, (Very Unlikely).
United Way supports literacy classes, quality child care, affordable housing and other ladders to the middle class. And a strong middle class makes the best bridge between what would otherwise be two cities doomed to isolation and fear of "the other."
True, but in the United States they will live in a more wealthy poverty.
I think you meant to say, "True, because in the United States they will live in a more wealthy poverty."
ie, the Hispanics communities have been convinced that the racist patriarchy is holding them down, too.
There is no such law. Our problem stems from an extremely liberal interpretation of the 14th Amendment that needs to be challenged before the Supreme Court.
Amendment XIV:
1868
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
DOES NOT MEAN, NOR WAS IT EVER INTENDED TO MEAN THIS:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States.
You can't just ignore 46.43% of the words in a clause of an Amendment to the United States Constitution!
We've been hoodwinked by the liberals long enough.
This is on its way to the Supreme Court in what will be a landmark decision.
Group Files Motion in U.S.-Born Taliban's Case
"Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement filed a lawsuit against Yaser Esam Hamdi - a U.S.-born Saudi National to Saudis here on work visas."
The Supreme Court has no choice, but to overturn this Taliban's citizenship. His parents don't meet the requirements of the 14th Amendment.
Some Mexican woman that runs across the border and right into a U.S. hospital emergency room to have her baby doesn't either.
Whistling past the cemetery.
In Minnesota, at least, it is easy to purchase phoney I.D. All you need is SSN and a driver's license. Employers are hesitant to check further, even though they should --afraid of being "prejudiced" and not indulging their greed.
I left LA in '93 as soon as my degree was done. Never looked back.
It sucks.
One word. Yup.
Ever since the steady growth of overwelming liberalism/socialism beginning in the mid to late 70's, Kalifornia sadly has been headed down the proverbial tank.
It wasnt as easy to rob their more successful neighbors just by casting a vote in Latin America either. Thanks Democrats.
Illegal immigrants have started to realize that LA is becoming the sh*thole they left in Mexico. Illegal immigrants in LA are being treated no different than they were in Mexico. This is why they are moving further north. Many communities like LA proper, Anehiem, Santa Ana, Calexico, El Paso, San Ysidro and Escondido are mirror images of Mexican bastions of crime and corruption. Eventually, illegal immigrants will reap the same poverty they had in Mexico. That is, unless they move to another state.
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