Terrific blog! Navarette writes for my hometown paper, so I was slowly learning to despise him. However (and greatly to my surprise), he wrote a strong anti-illegal immigrant column today. Perhaps he has changed his mind on the issue. Also, I read about that pro-immigrant front group Americans for Border and Economic (in)Security. Just a front for big business. Thanks,

Jack D.

Right again, eh, you clever fellow!

The city I lived in insisted that a certain percentage of apartments be inspected annually, meaning that a city official and a rep from the apt management enter the selected apartments and look at possible health/safety problems. Our management was excellent, and I always complied when asked to allow them to inspect my apartment. This meant that about every 6-7 years or so I would be asked to allow them to inspect my apartment (apparently permission from the tenant was part of the inspection process), assuming that most tenants complied. The last 5 years I lived there, I was asked to allow inspection 4 times. My take on this was that many of the apartments were housing many more than the legal number of residents, let alone those on the lease; and the tenants didn't want to open themselves to eviction for over-occupancy, a health and safety violation. Keep in mind here that our management was actually quite good - they just had no way of enforcing occupancy laws short of surprise "midnight raids" for lack of a better word. Naturally they were hesitant to do this in our politically correct world.

In 2004, I ended up doing consulting work in NoVA, which necessitated my renting a condo in another complex. A young African woman drown in our pool. The complex posted a notice that this young woman was NOT a resident and she had no business in the complex at all. Her family insisted that she most certainly WAS a resident. Who was right? I suspect both were: The young woman was not on any valid lease but she was living there anyway in violation of rules.

Where will it end?

Someone I know travels around doing appliance service in a major California metropolitan area, and he tells me all the time about going into apartments, houses, condos etc occupied by (people who look and sound like) immigrants and seeing several sleeping bags on the floor of each bedroom and in the living room. Of course when you live like that, i.e. not like most Americans would want to live, you can work for a lot less as well.

"They're probably living two or three families to a house..."

Which, of course, makes for lovely neighborhoods with quite a nice ambience. Suburban tenements. And property values? Not to worry.

Absolutely correct as usual, eh, but let me add that the folks praising these 2 or 3 families to a house - not to mention dozens of assorted singles who come and go - do NOT live near these flop houses. They live well away from them.

I used to live in an apartment complex in NoVA that had served for years as a community of middle/working class residents of all ages, races, and ethnic groups. In the '90's it was inundated by immigrants mainly from El Salvador with a few Ethiopians. Two-BR apartments that had housed a single person or couple soon held 4 (legally) or 6 or more (illegally) people who moved in and out at will. Crime, litter, overflowing trash cans, inability to find parking and laundry facilities all followed. As more of the low density tenants moved out, largely as a result of the above conditions, more high density tenants moved in. It basically turned into high density slum as the old community, some of whom had lived there for decades, disappeared and was destroyed. This destruction finally was more or less halted. How? The "extra" people living in the apartment complex began parking in the nearby single-family neighborhoods where houses started at half a million dollars or more. These guys got angry and something was done. Now it seems that the complex - one of the few affordable housing sites in this NoVA community - is being turned into "luxury" apartments, meaning that neither the old tenants nor the new ones can afford to live there. This is called progress. Ha!

"They're probably living two or three families to a house..."

Which, of course, makes for lovely neighborhoods with quite a nice ambience. Suburban tenements. And property values? Not to worry.

For the record, I think Navarrette is syndicated -- he's an official 'Hispanic voice' now.

If you bother to send him an email detailing nonsense in his writing, you'll get nothing or something like 'Glad you found the piece interesting' in return.