Editorials
Wednesday, October 2, 1996
Discriminating
against immigrants
LET'S hear it for George Soros. He's the international financier who pledged $50 million to help immigrants become U.S. citizens. He said the pledge was a direct response to the federal government's recent cuts in aid to legal immigrants. He is right: The cuts were deplorable.
Soros, a native of Hungary, learned the benefits of public assistance in Britain as an immigrant and made his fortune in the United States. He has formed a philanthropic organization to distribute funds to immigrant-aid groups to assist with English-language instruction and civics classes. He said he feels that the cuts made by Congress in benefits for legal immigrants in the welfare reform law violated the spirit of the Constitution.
Soros, 66, left Hungary as a teen-ager in 1947, moving to Great Britain, where he took a job as a train porter. He broke his leg on the job and, though an immigrant, received treatment under Britain's socialized medical system. He went on to graduate from the London School of Economics and moved to the United States in 1956. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in the early 1960s. He now manages an investment fund of $8 billion.
Of his fund for immigrants, Soros said, "There are real people out there being hurt, and that's the real concern. I hope that people will share my feelings and rebuke the people who have acted in a rather mean-spirited way."
The welfare law's discrimination against legal immigrants with regard to eligibility for social programs is an outrageous scapegoating of innocent people. Legal immigrants pay taxes just like citizens and should be entitled to the same benefits.
The immigration bill before Congress would have made matters even worse except for some last-minute changes demanded by the White House. A provision that would have put legal immigrants in danger of deportation if they received 12 months of public benefits in their first seven years in this country was dropped. So was one that would have barred immigrants from using Medicaid to pay for treatment for AIDS or HIV infection.
One of the unintended effects of such punitive measures is to prod legal immigrants to apply for citizenship - which they are doing in droves. George Soros, an immigrant himself, is helping them. He understands the situation far better than the members of Congress who voted for these anti-immigrant provisions.
Court decisions
WE know that the state is pinched for funds but it's ridiculous when the judiciary can't afford to issue full opinions because it's so short-handed. Chief Justice Ronald Moon announced that the Intermediate Court of Appeals has begun issuing "summary disposition orders" for cases it affirms and short memorandum opinions for reversals.
The problem is the court's backlog of cases. At the end of fiscal year 1996, the appellate courts had 1,327 cases pending. Of those, 413 were more than two years old; 33 were more than four years old. The flood of litigation that is swamping the judicial system may be abated somewhat by alternative means of dispute resolution such as mediation, which the Hawaii courts are now promoting. However, the courts must be given the resources required to dispose of the cases that reach them in a suitable manner. Having enough judges to issue adequate explanations of appellate decisions is fundamental.
Dangerous practice
THE deaths of three persons in a highway crash on Maui point up the need for a law that prohibits riding in the beds of pickup trucks. In this case, two of the three victims were riding in a truck bed and were thrown onto the roadway. This is a gaping hole in the traffic safety laws. People riding in cars and the cabs of trucks are required to wear seat belts, yet the law permits riding in truck beds, which is far more dangerous.
The argument is often made that riding in truck beds must be permitted because families with pickups can't afford two vehicles. But are the lives of these people therefore less precious? This is an intolerable double standard. The Legislature must act to prohibit this dangerous practice.
A baseball outrage
THE Major League Baseball umpires agreed to work the playoff games yesterday and today, reversing an earlier decision to boycott the games until the Baltimore Orioles' Roberto Alomar was suspended. Alomar was given a five-game suspension after spitting at umpire John Hirschbeck after a called third strike. However, under baseball's rules no penalty could take effect until Alomar's appeal was heard. Rules should sometimes be broken, and this was one of those times. Alomar should have been barred from play immediately. This incident is a black mark on baseball that will be remembered long after the season is over.
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Rupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor