Page 4 - Dinuba Sentinel 6-7-18 E-edition

Opinion
A4 | Thursday, June 7, 2018
In My Opinion
Illegal immigration creates
economic burden
Fred Hall - Publisher
Today we offer for your debt produces a debt-
consideration what is perhaps
to-GDP ratio that is higher than Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. All of those countries are facing economic collapse and ruin.
Agriculture needs workers. There seems to be no doubt about
the most fallacious statement ever written or uttered by the
media, politicians or special interest groups, “Diversity makes us stronger and immigration makes us more prosperous." It's impossible to imagine how one could string together 10
words that could be so demonstrably false when the real subject is illegal immigration!
There is no real argument here about trueimmigrationbutdon'ttrytoframe your argument to cover those who sneaked in by using such an expansive lie.
Truth is, according to a survey recently released by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) that providing health care, education, law enforcement as well as social
and government services to illegals and their dependents cost the State
of California (taxpayers) almost $26 billion annually. Roughly one in six Californians is illegally in this country. We still can't see how immigration is a net plus as special interest groups and politicians indicate.
Roughly 12 percent of all American citizens live in California, yet it accounts for 33 percent of this country's welfare checks. California is also number one in the United States for food stamp usage. Somehow
we manage to have more people on welfare than most countries around the world. But, what happened to the idea that immigration would make us more prosperous?
Beginning to feel proud of our accomplishments? It's a good time
to take note of the fact that almost one-fourth of the nation's homeless population consider the golden state their residence and 25 percent of them are without a place to live and living on our streets. Remember that we only have 12 percent of the population in total. Are you beginning to reconsider the sanity of having uncontrolled borders?
State and local debt has swollen to $1.5 trillion. Combining our state debt with California's share of the national
Guest Column
ree cheers for a frugal BSrooklyn legal secretary
Fred Hall
the veracity of that statement as well as the one which asserts that Californians won'tdothatwork. Perhapsthat's because the government of this state has become so liberal that many people are figuratively encouraged to not work. How about a “bracero” type program for Central Valley growers and others who need that specific labor?
I was not a resident of California when that program was in full force, but have yet to encounter anyone who found fault with it—except the labor unions. From everything that I have been told, it provided a dependable source of labor with sufficient oversight that the necessary controls were in place.
One would find it difficult to
argue that immigration has been an important part of the growth and development of this country, but
that immigration had always been controlled and every effort was made for those coming to our shores to assimilate, “out of many, one.” If that is not to be the case, one has simply to read the events at The Tower of Babel. A single, unifying purpose is necessary for any country to be truly great. The idea of America being divided into a large number of “tribes” is unworkable and unacceptable.
Becoming an “American” brings great responsibility to all those who aspire to live in this great land. One of the greatest is to not be a burden to one's neighbors in terms of financial support.
But, as always, that's only one man's opinion.
Fred Hall is publisher of the Sentinel.
Guest Column
Afuture for home ownership
t this point, it’s no secret that America has an be sustainable — either morally or affordable housing problem. Home ownership, economically. Fixing this system and long the staple of the “American Dream,” is getting the American dream back on
increasingly a privilege enjoyed only by the wealthier and whiter.
For many young people, the opportunity their parents had to build stable wealth through home ownership seems like a cruel joke in today’s economy. There’s even a viral tweet: “Millennials. Walking around like they rent the place.”
But the housing situation in the U.S. is no laughing matter.
According to the Pew Research Center, America has more renters than now than at any point in the last 50 years. A generational shift in lifestyle choices? Unlikely. A 2016 survey of renters found that 72 percent would like to own a home, but many were holding off for financial reasons.
For many millennials, the choice between a job
and an opportunity to own home is a stark one. As manufacturing and farming communities have declined, job opportunities are concentrating in cities like San Francisco and New York, hubs for the knowledge economy where homeownership is far out of reach for ordinary Americans.
For young people of color, the situation is even worse. Decades of racial disparities in housing policy and markets locked their families out of the wealth building opportunities enjoyed by the parents and grandparents of many white people. Those impacts are still felt today.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 72 percent of whites own their homes, compared to 57 percent for Asians, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, 48 percent for Hispanics, and 42 percent for blacks.
And even when homeownership was attainable, these owners of color built wealth slower than their white counterparts. A recent Zillow study found that 80 years after the federal government used racial redlining to determine “good” and “bad” neighborhoods for mortgage lending, the impacts of this discrimination are still being felt in depleted home values for many black owners.
Simply put, the American housing system may not
track means rethinking how home ownership works, and who has access to it.
One idea? Community-controlled land and housing, like land trusts and housing co-operatives. The idea is to
create opportunities for people often excluded from the ownership economy, while also
keeping a community’s long-term interests in mind. For instance, a community land trust works by
entrusting ownership of a piece of land to a nonprofit dedicated to permanent affordability. That nonprofit can then sell homes on this land at below-market prices — with the provision that the new owners are obligated to pass this affordability on to the next buyer when they sell.
Locking in affordability like this means that economic revitalization doesn’t need to be accompanied by the kind of skyrocketing prices making homes so unaffordable in cities like San Francisco or Boston. And it means that there’s always an affordable first rung on the ladder of homeownership for future generations.
Even in cities where homes aren’t expensive now, this can protect affordability for the future.
These are strategies with decades of on-the-ground testing behind them, and they’re ready to be scaled up. For example, Proud Ground, a Portland-based nonprofit community land trust, has served more than 300 families since the early 1990s.
There are an estimated 225 active community land trusts across the country with a similar structure as Proud Ground. Many of these are small, and some are just getting off the ground. But with proper support, they can spread and grow to be a key part of the affordable homeownership solution America needs.
Jarrid Green is a Senior Research Associate at the Democracy Collaborative. Distributed by OtherWords. org.
Jarrid Green
ylvia Bloom died in 2016, an many millions unknown 96-year-old. Now the of disciplined, world knows all about her. sacrificing, and
The New York Times recently profiled the remarkable fortune Sylvia Bloom quietly accumulated over the course of her 67-year career as a legal secretary. That fortune totaled over $9 million. And Bloom has now left the bulk of that wealth, the Times reveals, to help children from poor families.
None of Bloom’s surviving relatives or friends had any idea that their unassuming loved one had saved anything remotely close to her multiple millions. Bloom had lived frugally all her life in Brooklyn. She avoided the high life. She counted her pennies. In the end, she put all those pennies to good use.
Stories like Bloom’s have been popping up regularly. Leonard Gigowski, a Wisconsin shopkeeper, died three years ago at age 90 and left a “secret $13 million fortune” that’s currently funding scholarships. Grace Groner passed away in 2010 at age 100. She spent most of her life in a one-bedroom Illinois home, shopped at thrift stores, and left $9 million for her alma mater.
Our popular culture can’t seem to get enough of these life-affirming tales of modest multi-millionaire seniors. These stories make us feel good.
They also, unfortunately, reinforce
a message that cheerleaders for our society’s richest find enormously convenient.
You don’t have to be money- hungry, commit vile acts, or even have extraordinary talents to become wealthy, all these stories about hidden millions suggest. You just have to be frugal.
And if you don’t happen to become rich, this media coverage not so subtly hints, just look in the mirror. You, too, could have counted your pennies and built a huge fortune. You chose not to.
Conservative pundits have always loved this basic “frugality pays” thesis. If we all only understood “that building wealth takes discipline, sacrifice, and hard work,” as one noted a few years ago, we could all become wealthy.
But if “discipline, sacrifice, and hard work” build wealth, why do so
Sam Pizzigati
hard-working Americans today have so little of it?
Sylvia Bloom’s life offers some clues. Yes, Bloom lived frugally, sacrificed, and
worked hard. But she also matured in a society — mid-20th century America — that endeavored to help disciplined, sacrificing, and hard-working people.
That help came in many different forms. Sylvia Bloom attended Hunter College, part of a system of free public higher education in New York City. She and her husband lived in a rent- controlled apartment. She commuted, for a few dimes per day, on one of world’s best public transit systems.
Young adults today confront a different reality. Sky-high college costs have turned 21st-century youths into life-long debtors. To find an affordable place to live, they have to squeeze into tiny — and expensive — apartments close to their jobs or plop themselves in distant exurbs, fighting traffic jams all the way to work.
These millennials aren’t living the frugal life. They’re living the austere life — and not by choice. Our elected leaders have thrust this austerity upon them, with decades of public policies that have rewarded the rich with tax cuts and whittled away public services at every opportunity.
Sylvia Bloom had the good fortune to live her early adult years in a society much more caring than ours. She cared back — and chose to devote her own financial good fortune to helping others to the same support that so helped her.
So, yes, Sylvia Bloom’s life does indeed offer up inspiration. But let’s not let greedier people turn that life into a rationalization for their riches.
Sam Pizzigati co-edits Inequality. org. His latest book, The Case for a Maximum Wage, will appear this spring. Follow him at @Too_Much_ Online. Distributed by OtherWords. org.
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