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MY POV - In the latest edition of the Studio City, Sherman Oaks, and Encino News, Nithya Raman, our one-woman wrecking crew and Councilwoman for District 4, has defended the indefensible. Nithya lauds her recent vote and the vote by the City Council to enshrine further policies that make Los Angeles a super sanctuary city. Nithya has the gall to say she knows "how important it is to feel safe and welcome in the city you call home." Showing only compassion for the illegals that are inhabiting the city and not her constituents, who are affected by this wave of unwanted immigration. Nithya shows no awareness that more than 300,000+ of these border jumpers are convicted criminals in their country of origin.
Raman came to the United States when she was 6 years old. Her parents were legal immigrants. It is stunning that she has no differentiation between legal and illegal immigrants. Her Indian parents had to go through a rigorous process to come to the U.S. They had to be interviewed, wait their turn, and pay hundreds of dollars in fees for the privilege of coming here. When they arrived, they did not get free hotel rooms, EBT cards, or welfare. I wonder how her parents feel about the 12 to 20 million people who have jumped the line.
Nithya swore to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States when she became a Councilwoman. In denying the Federal Government's Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel the right to arrest these people, who are a threat to public safety, she shows yet again that she does not give a peso's worth of thought to public safety. She also seems to have no awareness that over 500,000 women and children coming across the border illegally have been trafficked, and many are subject to sexual assaults. Worse yet are the 300,000 plus missing children that may have been sold to pedophiles or are working for rations in inhuman conditions somewhere in this country, possibly within the city or the county.
Nithya bears a lot of responsibility for the continuing crime wave in Encino and the city and the lack of adequate police patrols, which we all suffer from. We would all like to know that we can safely go out to dinner and, upon returning home, discover that an hour ago, a group of South American crime tourists ransacked our house. Given how Nithya has ignored business owners’ pleas to reign in drug addicts disrupting their businesses and disrespected parents who want to walk their children to school without navigating homeless encampments with feces and dirty needles on the sidewalks, Nithya’s suicidal altruism would need more than a tragedy like Lakin Riley’s murder to change her thoughts on how menaces to public safety need to be treated.
Newsflash: Nithya, we don't feel safe in our home city. Some of us have lived here all our lives and have never seen crimes like this. Tom Homan and Trump have made it clear that the deportations are about removing threats to public safety from the country. Given the rampant crime problem in CD4, one would think Nithya would be the first to embrace this policy to help restore public safety. This is an erroneous thought.
The best estimates show almost 1,000,000 illegals are living in Los Angeles, the most of any place in the country. Fox News reported in 2017 that illegals in LA got 3 dollars in benefits for every dollar they spent. (where do I sign up?) Between 2015 and 2017, that’s $1.3 billion in benefits. With today’s tidal wave of mass illegal migration, the figure for all the benefits illegals get is probably orders of magnitude more, including free health care.
According to Grok Ai and ChatGPT, illegal immigrants are costing the city and the county almost a billion dollars a year, add an additional billion dollars a year in Los Angeles for homeless services. That 2 billion dollars means we get roads worthy of Rwanda and a substandard school system where English is no longer the primary language to communicate in many schools. Is it any wonder why we have dreadful emergency room waits? Unlicensed drivers, mainly immigrants, make up approximately 10% of the country's population, contribute 20% of all accidents, and are usually involved in a higher level of fatal accidents.
There are so many ways that illegal immigration harms the average citizen in LA, and it's not just through outright unlawful activity, theft, smuggling drugs, or any other form of property crime:
Illegal immigration has significant economic impacts, such as wage depression, particularly for low-skilled workers. Undocumented workers increase the labor supply, leading to lower wages for jobs that require less formal education or skills. Illegals cause public spending to rise out of proportion to their contributions, if any. Border jumpers cause increased outlays in services like remedial education, health and welfare benefits, food stamps, and lodging support.
Therefore, we live with the new normal of overcrowding and longer wait times for the citizens who pay for these essential services. We ignore our veterans and our truly deserving homeless families who have been displaced due to gentrification. These illegal migrants are given priority over every other deserving need for selfish political reasons. Higher deficits and taxes are inevitable outcomes of unbridled mass migration.
This increase in population contributes to higher housing costs, which crowd out and affect affordability for citizens and legal residents. Many people in Los Angeles bemoaned that their children couldn't afford to live here.
It's hard to document exactly how much crime is done by undocumented immigrants because the powers that be have a vested interest in underreporting their crimes. CBS News suggests that one crime tourist group stole $35 million in high-end merchandise and cash over the last few years. If ten groups were operating in LA and police acknowledged multiple groups, over $350,000,000 in damage could have been inflicted on Angelenos and insurance companies.
Illegal immigration mocks the rule of law. Societies function under agreed-upon regulations, and immigration laws are part of that framework. When these laws are broken, the legal structure and framework that ensures order and fairness are disregarded; we become a society that is no longer based on rules and laws. Will Councilwoman Raman test her limited immunity because she and the LACC are going to willfully harbor and shelter undocumented individuals and risk prosecution under federal felony law Statutes? In the next few months, we will probably find out.
Is it any wonder why LA has become a low-trust society?
Eliot Cohen has been on the Neighborhood Council, serves on the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, and is on the Board of Homeowners of Encino and was the president of HOME for over seven years. Eliot retired after a 35-year career on Wall Street. Eliot is a critic of the stinking thinking of the bureaucrats and politicians that run the County, the State, and the City. Eliot and his wife divide their time between L.A. and Baja Norte, Mexico.
