Dear Santa Clarita, as a resident of the Santa Clara Valley I spend a lot of my retail dollars in your city.
I will not spend a penny in your city until you repeal your recent decisions to oppose SB54.
SB54 still allows local law enforcement to report any one who is undocumented and has committed serious crimes to federal agencies. This law does NOT protect dangerous criminals. It protects families and gives them a tiny bit of assurance that their lives will not be turned upside down during a routine traffic ticket. This law protects children. In school. In their homes.
According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, “Immigrants are in fact much less likely to commit crime than natives, and the presence of large numbers of immigrants seems to lower crime rates. This disparity also holds for young men most likely to be undocumented immigrants: Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan men.” (www.nap.edu/read/21746/chapter/9)
SB54 also ensures that folks will feel safer in reporting crimes. Without SB54 we have folks staying in the shadows, women who are afraid to report sexual assault or domestic violence. We need our communities to feel protected when they call law enforcement and SB54 helps create a little bit of assurance. An attack on SB54 is an attack on families, on women and on children.
If you eat food produced in this country and benefit literally at the cellular level from the hard work of so many of our undocumented brothers and sisters – and you are still running around shouting anti-immigrant vitriol please take a look at the hypocrisy there. Look at the blood flowing in your own veins. There is literally immigrant energy and good underpaid work folded into every level of your being.
Loni Kate English
Santa Paula
