CHOC would add to Westside magnets

Ila Johnson

In a letter to the editor, Jean Forbath, the founder of the Share

Our Selves charity (SOS), expresses the misguided notion that adding

yet another charity on the Westside is a good idea (Sounding Board,

“Clinic will serve a valuable purpose,” Aug. 4). The charity in

question is the proposed 4,000-square-foot CHOC health center, to be

located in a residential area at Rea Elementary School.

Forbath knows a lot about charities. In addition to being the

founder of SOS, she has served on the board of directors of Save Our

Youth (SOY) and Families Costa Mesa, and has served as treasurer of

Save Our Youth.

In defense of the addition of yet another charity on the Westside,

Forbath asserts “unfortunately, that’s where the needs are.” Did it

ever occur to her that perhaps the ever-increasing size, number and

need of charities located exclusively on the Westside could be the

existence of the charities themselves? Charities that seem to be a

magnet drawing people to the area who then permanently locate there.

It seems obvious that the proposed clinic will prove to fit the

“build it and they will come” scenario. It is a vicious circle. The

more free services, the more poor; the more poor, the more charities

needed.

Ironically, Forbath does not live on the Westside, the location of

the above-referenced charities that is looking more like a ghetto

every day.

Providing free services on the Westside has served to keep the

poor, predominately Latino population on the Westside segregated

there.

That tends to keep Mesa Verde, where Forbath lives, relatively

immune from the problems the Westside deals with on a daily basis. It

would seem that none of the people so intent on locating the CHOC

clinic on the Westside of Costa Mesa live there. Sequestered, as they

are, in their neighborhoods in other areas of Costa Mesa, Newport

Beach and Laguna Hills, unlike the beleaguered residents of West

Costa Mesa, they can return home each evening untroubled by high

crime, drug dealing, blight and pockets of slum-like conditions.

Newport-Mesa Unified School District trustee Dana Black, when

advocating for the health clinic, stated that the district is

required by law, and committed to, educating all children. I

unequivocally agree that it should have that commitment. If children

are here, without exception, they must be educated. An uneducated

populace is a threat to a free society and to representative republic

form of government in this country.

But large numbers of undocumented immigrant students have put and

continue to put an undeniable strain on the district. I support the

district in its efforts to rise to the challenge.

Nevertheless, I fail to see the connection between the CHOC clinic

and the primary mission of the school district to educate students.

There are many free clinics in existence in the Santa Ana Unified

School District, with no data showing a correlation between the

clinics and improved student learning.

Gwen Parry, director of community services for Hoag Hospital, who

also favors the CHOC charity, speaks about the “poorest of the poor”

in need of medical assistance in Orange County. Parry notes that most

or all are undocumented. That is a tragic situation with no easy

answers.

But setting up and perpetuating a system that continues to

encourage and reward migrants seeking free services, now termed

entitlements, is really unfair to working citizens; citizens so

overburdened by taxation that mothers are forced out of the home and

their children into day care, because it is very difficult for

families to make ends meet on one income.

When those concerned about illegal immigration, a politically

incorrect position, voice their concerns, they are invariably labeled

racist.

Yet Maria Garcia, (“CHOC health center debate still lingers,”

Wednesday) made a great point by stating: “abide by laws and enter

this country legally.... We not only go out of our way to ignore them

(those here illegally), we actually encourage them.”

That says it all. Legal immigrants are hurt by encouraging illegal

immigration, and Garcia is very articulate in her explanation of how

they are hurt.

The simple fact is, there is a limit to what a citizenry can bear.

We can’t save Third World countries, but we can become one.

* ILA JOHNSON is a Costa Mesa resident.