I would like to know what went wrong on Capitol Hill. California offers some of the greatest benefits to illegal immigrants, which is why it is home to an estimated 40 percent of the U.S. illegal population. Five hundred pieces of legislation targeting illegal immigration during the first six months of this year were introduced and California did not reap the benefits by passage of any of them.

1) California provides in-state college and university tuition to illegal immigrants.

2) California spends nearly $1 billion a year in MediCal services for an average of 780,000 illegal immigrants a month.

3) California hospitals are forced to pick up the slack of illegal immigrant hospital bills not covered by Medi-Cal when these individuals slip out of town. This amounts to an estimated $1.4 billion a year that you and I pick up the tab.

4) Now I find out that illegal immigrants are eligible for Social Security benefits that I pay into. I would not have known without the efforts of Congressman Elton Gallegly.

Communication was his first strong point. The second that Congressman Gallegly is actively involved where other public officials are not is he sends out surveys to those in his area.

These are a small form of a ballot with the issues outlined that he must vote on. And he asks how we would vote. A true leader stays in touch with people. Elton is the only one I have seen who asks for feedback. What's troublesome is the difficulty some other members of the house have in steering our country in the right direction. The only one on target is Gallegly's 24th Congressional District.

On "my" survey I did not vote in favor of any of the bullets listed above, nor did Elton. These were put in place courtesy of other house members. Please keep fighting for us, Congressman Gallegly. Joseph R. Vesalga Simi Valley