My opinion is that the situation is hopeless and that a political resolution by the US government will never happen in my lifetime, if indeed, one ever will ever happen at all. The main problem is that the problem has been allowed to continue for so long. Those who write the laws governing immigration only seem to get worked up about these issues during election years. But who knows? — maybe they'll come up with a solution before English becomes a second language in California.

Being a native Californian, my personal experience with undocumented aliens has been with Mexicans and others from Central and South America, and I've been hearing the pro and con arguments all my life.

CON
• They are here illegally - what do you not understand about illegal?
• They pay no income taxes, yet they take from our public service, educational, and welfare institutions.
• The males tend to be criminals who are likely to end up in prison with US taxpayers suffering the burden of their care and maintenance.
• They should all be sent back to where they came from to get in line and apply for legal immigration.

PRO
• Most are diligent, hard-working people who just want a chance to achieve the American dream.
• They do the hard, manual labor that helps keep our food prices low, and that Americans won't do.
• They would get social security numbers and pay income taxes if they weren't afraid of being deported.
• Millions of these people are already here and it would be more practical to have a legalization plan rather than trying to round them all up and sending them back.

Well, I won't argue that there isn't a certain amount of substance in all of the above, which is why I see no hope of a resolution that will please everyone.

My experiences with Mexicans and other Latin Americans have always been good. I employed many of them in the silk screen printing business I owned in Southern California for 40 years. As far as I know, they were all documented with the proper papers, and none was ever arrested or deported.

I employed several to work on the avocado grove my family and I lived on for 27 years in Fallbrook, California. Many were itinerate workers of whom I confess to never having asked for legal documentation. A grove owner who suddenly needs someone to harvest his prematurely ripening fruit tends not to be preoccupied with a day-laborer's legal status during a couple of days' work.

Nonetheless, I always paid them at the current rate then in effect for documented workers and I always served them lunch, along with providing transportation to and from wherever they were staying. Some will undoubtedly argue that I, along with most other grove owners in California, should be in jail. I'll leave this for the politicians and the legal eagles to squabble about.

I find the subject of who should and shouldn't be allowed to stay here quite fascinating. Did the Native American Indians have any immigration laws in effect when the Europeans started arriving a few centuries ago?

Historically, the thing that determines who owns what piece of land has been decided by who carries the biggest stick. The Europeans came in droves, carrying more and bigger sticks. For that matter, did the Native Americans take the land away from aborigines who were forced to move south to the tropics of Central America or north to the frigid temperatures of Alaska? Maybe property disputes go all the way back to Adam and Eve and who got to sleep on which side of the hammock.

My relationship with south-of-the-border natives might be somewhat unusual, in that I speak Spanish fairly well and have always found it easy to communicate with them. Where did I learn Spanish? Well, when I was 14 I signed up for Spanish-1 at Le Conte Junior High School in Los Angeles, and I have been studying the language ever since.

Regarding the argument that "they do work that Americans refuse to do," I believe there is a lot of truth to that. I once spent a couple of weeks harvesting onions in the San Fernando Valley during the summer of 1943, and I can tell you that it was not a fun job. The onions had some kind of a nettled plant growing around them that scratched my hands and arms to the point where I had several bloody cuts at the end of each day. And no, nobody offered me a pair of gloves to use.

I was a pre-teenager who, along with several others, was offered the chance to earn some quick cash working on a farm in Canoga Park. My divorced mom was working at a defense plant and I had been sent to live with a woman who had room on her country acreage to care for a few kids whose parents couldn't provide them a home. Well, a neighboring farmer couldn't find enough workers to do his harvesting, so he asked our caregiver about "borrowing" her boys. I'm quite sure this was totally against the child-labor laws of the times.

In any case, I got a taste of what field workers have to deal with on an ongoing basis, and I can honestly say that this is one American who would never apply for a job like that.

Does this mean I view Latinos as inferiors whose job it will always be to harvest your vegetables and mine? No, I mean that unless we were born rich, most of us had to start with an entry level job at some point in our lives. I sold newspapers on a corner in Hollywood, dropped out of high school to bag groceries at a Ralph's Market in Los Angeles, and joined the army at 17. There was a lot of uncertainty, angst, and self-recrimination along the way, but — looking back — I wouldn't trade any part of it for the world.