Letters to the Editor: California’s economy needs immigrants. What about the environment?

Migrants reach through a border wall for clothing handed out by volunteers in San Diego as they wait to apply for asylum in the U.S. last year. Your article does mention “short-term public costs,” but it completely ignores long-term environmental and quality-of-life effects. While Californians are being warned that our lifestyle is unsustainable — and that we should give up our gas stoves, our gas-powered cars, our single-family zoning and our environmental regulations on development, and we must conserve water — your article is telling us that adding more people to the state will boost the economy. Here is an excerpt from the section of the report titled, “The Budgetary Effects of Unauthorized Immigrants”: “The tax revenues that unauthorized immigrants generate for state and local governments do not offset the total cost of services provided to those immigrants. Most of the estimates found that even though unauthorized immigrants pay taxes and other fees to state and local jurisdictions, the resulting revenues offset only a portion of the costs incurred by those jurisdictions for providing services.” There’s also this: “Federal aid programs offer resources to state and local governments that provide services to unauthorized immigrants, but those funds do not fully cover the costs incurred by those governments.” Yes, managed legal immigration may be a net positive, but you must consider the costs of services for millions of unauthorized immigrants.