Dear Zev:
During a 1 1/2 hour presentation at the Seniors for Action meeting on Thursday, July 31, 2003, your attempt to bamboozle a group of gullible Seniors didn't work on all of us. Knowing that I am a critic of yours, you chose to disenfranchise me by refusing to take any questions or comments from me. At one point when you got tired of seeing my arm raised high, you said to me: "you can talk to yourself, I'm not going to talk to you."
Here are some of the comments you wouldn't allow me to make:
To the question by one senior of your position on driver licenses for illegal aliens which you favor, you dodged by responding "...Let me ask you, what are you afraid of?" The senior was not prepared to answer, but I was. I will answer now with this op-ed submitted to a major newspaper.
You made clear to the seniors that your opposition to the governor recall was on the basis of its cost. What a lame reason. Here in California, the $30 million dollar cost of democratically holding the recall election is certainly a more legitimate government expense than the $60 Million cost to administer driver licenses to illegal aliens. What happened to your frugality.
Many of the seniors wanted to know why our county hospitals were providing prenatal and baby delivery medical services to illegal aliens. You insisted that the majority of those receiving the services were not illegal aliens. I wondered at that point what planet you came from. You said yourself, that county workers are prohibited from asking any questions regarding immigration status, so how would you know?
Although county workers are not supposed ask about immigration status, they make an exception for some medical service seekers by profiling. You know this to be true from my letter to you.
We can understand that your hands are tied to some extent by federal and state mandates to provide care to illegal aliens. But tell me Zev, does the federal government mandate that the county advertise free services to illegal aliens? Where are like signs in English -- there are none!. Those of us on to you, know that you are driven by your personal ideology which forces you to try to save all of the third world victims of poverty at the expense of Senior citizens (and all Americans).
Zev, as a Los Angeles County Supervisor, you are big on making motions for resolutions on issues that are the responsibilities of other branches of government, but effecting the County. For example, at your meeting held June 24, 2003, the following statement was entered into the record by you and Supervisor Knabe: "Southern California faces a crisis in airport capacity, which threatens to undermine the strength of our regional economy...
National Airports are the responsibility of the Federal Government. Yet you rightfully use your power as a County Politician to try to influence the federal government. So why don't you use your political power as a supervisor to fulfill your "wish" that federal government do their job in policing the borders?
If you were sincere in your concern for the cost to citizens by illegal aliens, you would have, by now, made a motion for a resolution by the Supervisors to lobby the feds to do their jobs. A trip to Washington to lobby congress might help also. Instead, you want driver licenses and Matricula IDs for law breakers who shouldn't be in the U.S. in the first place, costing the county billions.
Getting back to your allegation that the majority of women having babies at county hospitals are not illegal aliens, I realised there is a way to get the true data.
When my wife was admitted to Olive View Hospital, she was asked for her social security number (the social security numbers for our three county adopted children and myself were also asked for).
I became curious as to what the hospital admissions case workers do to fill in the line on the forms which asks for a social security number for illegal aliens. I remembered one of our close friends in Tijuana telling us that it is a daily occurrence for Mexican women who posses border crossing permits issued by the INS to LEGALLY cross into California (ostensibly to do some shopping in San Diego),
Several weeks ago when I and my family went to Tijuana to visit my wife's uncle, I dropped by the friend's house as I do about four times a year and asked her if she knew anyone who actually took advantage of L.A. County's generosity. She told me that she knew more women who had their babies in L.A. than she could count on her fingers. I told her that I was writing an article for a college course and wanted to know if my friend would introduce me to one of the women so that I could interview her.
So you see Zev, you don't know what your talking about.
By way of this letter, I am requesting the data for the past three years, of the number of births to mothers without social security numbers and of the number of those mothers with social security numbers. The information I am requesting is raw data and is not an invasion of privacy, thus I am entitled to it under the California Public Information Act which requires that you or someone whose job it is, produce the information within 10 days.
Hal Netkin
POB 3465
Van Nuys, CA 91407
818-989-3043
P.S. Now that illegal aliens can have driver licenses, you can expect that the thousands of Mexican women who will come from Mexico to have babies at County General, will be driven there by their California License bearing husbands and boyfriends.
Hard Copy of this E-letter and all attachments: Zev Yaroslavsky, Seniors for Action (all seniors),
