SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

Get courageous on immigration

YOUR concern about the Central Valley's explosive population growth (``Where will 10 million new Californians live?'' -- Opinion, Aug. 14) is welcome, albeit belated and misdirected. Instead of focusing on the cause of this burgeoning disaster, you are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

While fresh architectural ideas for growing towns and cities are helpful, they don't address the root of the problem: population growth.

In 1993, the Mercury featured a report by state demographers which predicted that California's population would double to 62 million by the year 2040, much of it from immigration. Other reports foresaw the Central Valley being transformed into a megalopolis sprawling from Bakersfield to Sacramento, and agriculture being pushed out of the valley.

At about the same time, Newsweek noted that of the more than one million legal immigrants admitted to the United States each year, over 40 percent choose California as their residence.

During the seven years which have passed since the 1993 report, two ominous things have occurred: The prescience of the demographers has been alarmingly demonstrated, and our nation has done nothing to reduce the only type of growth we can control.

If we are to save the treasured bread basket that is the Central Valley, truly a resource beyond price, and if we are to salvage anything of our declining quality of life, we must find the political courage to reform our immigration laws.

Woody Nedom
Los Gatos

Read Norwood Nedom's First Letter to the Mercury News:
"Immigration and growth"

Read Jan Tucker's response to Mr. Nedom's Letters

Read the Executive Director of the California Public Defender's Association's Email Reponse.