[Hugh R]

Lots of compassionate good points Cameron. But consider this, if that Section 8 family gets $900/month, that's $10,800/year, which is very close to what I paid the state of California in income taxes last year. BTW, Section 8 money comes from the Federal Government, I believe, or most of it. Anyway. If the equivalent of what I pay the state goes to support one family, and you multiply this by the tens of thousands in Los Angeles County alone, let alone the rest of the state or country, You have large numbers of families supporting other families, not building roads, not upgrading water systems, etc. Add on to Section 8 housing and you've got food stamps, education for their kids (discussed in my post above), subsidized electricity, and natural gas telephone, medical via' the emergency room, and pretty soon what it looks like to me is that for every family of four in a way lower income bracket than me, all the taxes paid by two or more "upper middle class" or higher families are going to support each one of those poorer families.

As you stated in your post, You can't get the dole if you are an illegal immigrant --> you have no ability to sign up. You don't have that problem in New Zealand, why should we have to pay for the illegal immigrants here?

Places like Los Angeles are very expensive to live, and if you don't have the necessary education, skills and abilities to make a decent living here on your own, then you should live in a less expensive part of the country.

I realize that I'm interspersing illegal and legal residents here, but the issue is still the same to me. I object to people "living" off the government. Which means "living" off of me. I took unemployment insurance for two months once when I was unexpectedly laid off, and thats it. Until they put lifetime caps on welfare, there were people who used to live in the vicinity of my first house who had three and four generations of family members on welfare. WTF is up with that?