L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich is continuing his campaign against illegal aliens, announcing that undocumented families that have so-called American-citizen anchor babies cost area taxpayers $54 million in welfare benefits in June alone.

He says the projected cost of such benefits to partially illegal families this year will be $624 million. We say partially because it appears that the benefits are targeting citizen children.

But here's how Antonovich slices it:

With the $550 million for public safety and nearly $500 million for healthcare, the total cost for illegal immigrants to County taxpayers exceeds $1.6 billion dollars a year. These costs do not include the hundreds of millions of dollars for education.

That's a ballsy proclamation in a town that's half Latino. But hey, Antonovich is a guy who portrays himself as a cowboy-hat wearing horse rider. (Irony: The cowboy comes from Latin America. Discuss).

Anyway, it's nice to be a king like Antonovich. He's a district safe from harm in efforts by the Count Board of Supervisors' two minority members, Gloria Molina and Mark Ridley-Thomas, to redistrict our town to make it more representative of those very Latinos Antonovich seems to hate.

Now, don't get us wrong. Government budgets are hurting, and we need to take care of our own (like citizen children) before we take care of illegals.

But, let's just be honest here: This is a subsidy for an underground industry — illegal alien labor — we ALL (every single frigging one of you) rely on.

Is Antonovich going to say with full certainty that he's never eaten at a restaurant with illegal busboys or never had his car vacuumed by an undocumented man or never got his hedges trimmed by an illegal? Really?

And while it's not your fault if the restaurant you're at has a brown guy with no papers lurking in the kitchen WE ALL benefit at least indirectly from illegal immigrant labor. That is a reality.

So let's deal with this based on that reality.

Buses take illegal immigrants to their jobs on the Westside everyday. They take care of our babies everyday. They wash our dishes everyday.

So, yes, we subsidize them. Metro, our bus and train system, is subsidized, and rich Westsiders benefit. And if they need food stamps or a little welfare (trust us, they want to work), that's a part of this dirty deal we have going on.

The flip side of all this is that illegals work for illegal wages with a lack of benefits and rights. Now, if we're unhappy with the related subsidies, lets stop them at the border the let them know we want a better deal. Perhaps we should negotiate even lower wages and fewer rights? We could dress them up as demons, because that's what we've made them.

Now, if you want count those pennies, Mr. Antonovich, that's fine. We're with you. But remember the bigger picture here.

[@dennisjromero/djromero@laweekly.com]

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