Letters page
Welcome to the OFIR Letters and Op-Eds section. Here you can read Letters to the Editor and Op-Eds that have been published in various newspapers and news sources.
There was a time, not so long ago, when immigrants to America had to demonstrate their ability to be self-sufficient. Some required sponsors who pledged to take care of the immigrant they were sponsoring so they wouldn’t become a public charge, a burden on the taxpayer.
They used to get stopped and checked for communicable diseases on Ellis Island in New York and Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, but…
Well, that was in a galaxy far, far away, apparently....
....You can now naturalize and become an American citizen even if you can’t afford the minimal $685 fee.
And, the fee waiver is not limited to those who want to naturalize.
U.S.C.I.S, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, now offers a fee waiver for those seeking Temporary Protected Status, TPS....
...So, Yemenis, or anybody who says they resided in Yemen, can now apply for TPS. As we say in the immigration reform movement, “Nothing in the world is as permanent as the term ‘temporary’ when applied to immigration status.”
“…people without nationality who last habitually resided in Yemen…” (emphasis added)
Now, some readers are probably searching their memory asking themselves, “Yemen? Isn’t that were Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is located?”
...So, we can now exercise appropriate sarcasm and modify the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, your militants yearning to bring the jihad without paying a fee.”
Oh, yeah, if you can’t read English, then the helpful U.S. government has also provided the TPS fee waiver announcement in Arabic.
The numbers of migrants fleeing turmoil and poverty around the world are rising astronomically. There are 20 million refugees flooding the world today, The New York Times reports, and one in four is Syrian. Europe is besieged and beginning to turn them back.
President Obama has decreed that we will take 10,000 Syrian refugees this year, and possibly more will come. A group of refugees, reportedly including one or more Syrians, arrived this month in Oregon, and is being resettled in Salem.
Considering the vast new scale of refugees, what is the best policy for assisting them?
As Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies says: “... the goal of refugee assistance is not to make us feel good. It is to assist as many people as possible with the resources available. And resettling a relative handful of them here to help us bask in our own righteousness means we are sacrificing the much larger number who could have been helped with the same resources.”
The United Nations organizes and operates refuges in the Middle East, in places which are near the countries in turmoil. Caring for refugees near their own countries is less expensive and also has the advantage of facilitating their return home when stability is restored. The United States contributes to maintenance of these safe areas, and could contribute more.
It’s very expensive and counterproductive to bring refugees to the U.S. Beyond questions of cost, it is also dangerous now because the screening processes for refugees are wholly inadequate, as revealed in an examination of procedures by the Center for Immigration Studies, and as reported to Congress by the director of the FBI.
Terrible disasters have happened here recently caused by Middle Eastern citizens or immigrants. In a BBC Radio 4 documentary series, “A New Life in Europe,” a Syrian man, head of a family attempting to enter Europe, speaks bitterly of Germany’s accepting some refugee claimants while he and his family are back in the Middle East after failing twice to reach their European destination and be accepted: “If they would close the door, people would try to help themselves here. ... We would change our plan, we wouldn’t have to keep trying and waiting for another boat. We would look for a better life somewhere else. They are throwing a piece of bread tied to a string, and they just keep pulling it away from you.”
Oregon and other states can determine to what extent they wish to cooperate with the president in his refugee programs. U.S. citizens should tell their legislators and the president to stop all refugee admissions at this time except for the very few whose identity and peaceful purposes can be unequivocally proven, such as certain translators working for U.S. embassies or our military forces. Instead, help the U.N. maintain safe areas for refugees near their own countries.
Elizabeth Van Staaveren of McMinnville is a longtime member of Oregonians for Immigration Reform.
Stephen Maly, vice-president of WorldMontana, continues beating the drums to bring Syrian refugees to Montana (“Refugee resettlement in Montana revisited,” IR, Jan. 17). He should know better. People familiar with U.S. refugee-resettlement programs do know better.
One central fact these people know is that refugee resettlement has become a business — big business. Instead of sacrificial charity undertaken by compassionate souls, resettlement now involves high-dollar collaboration between the U.S. government and nine national non-governmental organizations, including Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Services, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and International Rescue Committee.
Far from being donation-driven religious or civic charities, such organizations are dominantly federal contractors, running their refugee operations primarily — often above 90 percent — with government largesse. As refugee-policy expert Don Barnett wrote recently in the Washington Times, six-figure executive salaries “are the norm at the roughly 350 organizations affiliated with the nine major contractors. There are additional hundreds of supporting NGOs — most started and staffed by refugees and recent immigrants — soaking up grants from every agency of government except NASA.”
A regional example is Colorado’s Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, which covers refugee resettlement in Montana. According to their annual reports, refugee services consumed about $5.1 million of their 2013 fiscal year’s $13.4-million budget. Meanwhile, about $10.9 million of their $14.1 million revenue for that period came from government grants and contracts. According to their 2013 IRS tax return, the actual benefits — both cash and in-kind — bestowed by LFSRM upon the 1,362 refugees (and asylees) they served amounted to $2 million. This implies that $3.1 million went for refugee-program overhead, including the $122,595 total compensation to program vice president James Horan.
It’s unclear from the news reports about Maly’s refugees proposal whether WorldMontana, with its modest annual budgets of about $125,000, has ambitions to jump on this taxpayer-funded gravy train.
Montanans dubious about Maly’s ambitions have additional reasons for skepticism. An important aspect of these programs in cities nationwide is that, once they’ve agreed to accept a few refugees, the cities’ officials lose their say in the process, despite a legal requirement that the State Department’s resettlement bureaucrats consult regularly with state and local authorities about the targeted cities’ capabilities. Then their cities get inundated with needy people.
In 2013, for example, Domenic Sarno, the Democratic mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts, wrote to the State Department asking for cessation of the influx of refugees being dumped — that word is appropriate — on his city of 155,000 by three resettlement contractors. Interviewed by the local newspaper, Sarno explained, “We have done more than our fair share. It’s not fair to the refugees or Springfield. I have to draw the line. The number of refugee children who have little to no English language skills has overwhelmed the very limited interpretation capabilities of our public schools, and funding that was intended for use in assisting existing pupils.” But nearly a year later, Mayor Sarno was still pleading for that moratorium.
It’s similar in Amarillo, Texas, so burdened with Mideast refugees that the mayor and a city commissioner are struggling to halt further resettlement there. News reporting says that the city of about 200,000 currently fields 911 calls in 42 different languages. And echoing the Massachusetts mayor, Mayor Paul Harpole said, “We have 660 (refugee) kids who don’t speak English, and the U.S. Department of Education says they have to be at grade level within one year. It’s a ludicrous requirement — they don’t even know how to use the bathroom.”
Then there’s the point that Syrian refugees are nearly 100 percent Muslims. A marker of Maly’s naivete — or ignorance — is his assertion that “fruitful coexistence (between Muslims and Christians) is as old as our republic.”
He has things exactly backwards: In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met in London with Tripoli’s ambassador to ask why the Barbary pirates were plundering U.S. merchant ships in the Mediterranean and enslaving the ships’ passengers and crews, as the young American nation had done the Barbary states no harm. Replied the ambassador, as reported by Jefferson, “It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every Mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise.” Thus Jefferson and Adams were confronted by what contemporary Europeans knew: Islam is the West’s historic, mortal enemy.
And in The River War (1899), Winston Churchill noted, "No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science … the civilization of modern Europe might fall."
For a few Westerners, memories remain fresh: Serbian-born historian Serge Trifkovic recounted to me growing up in a society with a vivid collective recall of the centuries of Muslim rule in the Balkans, summarizing that Islam is “a totalitarian ideology incompatible with the fundamental values of the West — and all other civilized societies, India, China, and Japan included.”
Thus Montanans who acquaint themselves with the abundant facts and accessible history will likely oppose WorldMontana’s attempt to resettle Syrian refugees here.
In 2013 Rep. Vic Gilliam (R-Silverton/Hubbard) spearheaded the failed attempt to put driver cards in the hands of people in our country illegally. Now, he’s at it again.
Gilliam ignored the objections of his own constituents, who voted over three to one against issuing driver cards to illegal immigrants.
But Rep. Gilliam, in his Jan. 27 editorial “Immigration reform, not discrimination, is needed” (see Page A7 of Jan. 27 edition), casts an even wider net, implying that nearly a million Oregon voters who defeated the driver card law, including members of the Oregon House Republican Caucus and members of Oregonians for Immigration Reform, are racist for wanting our immigration laws enforced and for lawmakers to put American citizens first.
Foreign nationals work in Oregon illegally, often using a stolen identity or Social Security number to do so. They steal jobs from low skill, entry-level workers (especially teens, veterans, minorities and legal immigrants) their children overwhelm our schools, and their ever increasing numbers threaten our natural environment.
Unfortunately, as an elected official sworn to uphold the laws of this country, Gilliam seems to think it’s best, instead, to embrace the wishes of those that disregard our laws by coming here illegally.
Rep. Gilliam stated, “Largely as a result of a failed federal immigration policy, we have undocumented workers in our state who are proven hard-working citizens and trusted friends.” Undocumented workers are now citizens? According to Gilliam they are.
I’ve got news for you Vic: Our immigration policy has not failed; it’s simply not enforced!
Elected officials like you have compounded the problem. I blame lawmakers that pick and choose which laws to enforce and which laws they and their deep pocketed donors choose to ignore for their own benefit.
Rep Gilliam, you were elected to protect and serve your constituents, not foreign nationals illegally present in our state.
Latin America's Zika virus is the latest undocumented immigrant to hit our shores, but have no fear. Self-appointed Zika Warrior Prince Charles Schumer has declared that he is here to stop it.
The New York Democrat has a "three-point plan" of attack to build a "firewall" that will prevent an outbreak of the mosquito-borne illness from spreading across our mainland. He's armed with big charts and jabby index fingers, too. Allons!
Five cases of the Zika virus have been identified in the Empire State alone. The CDC says a total of 31 Americans in 11 states, including Florida, and Washington, D.C., have been identified as carriers who brought the miserable disease in from abroad.
The feds' don't worry-be-happy health bureaucrats emphasize that these are "isolated" incidents...
But on Tuesday, Dallas County, Texas, reported the first case in a resident based here in the continental U.S. who contracted the condition "through sexual contact...
When people in Washington tell you not to worry, be alarmed.
I know I'm not the only one who sniggered at the spectacle of the Senate's leading Gang of Eight immigration expansionists now playing Chicken Little about global communicable diseases.
Newsflash: The sky has already fallen. The barn door can't — or rather, won't — be closed by those scrambling in front of the cameras to grab headlines about the latest panic du jour. The fundamental policy dissonance is lost on tin-eared Schumer: While he makes theatrical grand gestures to stop foreign viruses from entering through the front porch, he and his amnesty-promoting pals in both parties have left the side and back entries swinging wide open for illegal immigration.
People from Central and South America, ground zero for Zika and other infectious diseases including tuberculosis, dengue, Chagas, Chikungunya and schistosomiasis, make up nearly 15 percent of the illegal immigrant population in the U.S....
The Democrat-manufactured border surge ushered in a resurgence of tropical diseases across the Southwest. Meanwhile, laborers here illegally and amnestied migrants who have never been screened for disease obtained Obama work permits to hold low-wage jobs in places like Chipotle, which shut down scores of its restaurants over the past three months after two separate E. coli outbreaks.
Now comes news from Texas governor Greg Abbott and Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, that the Obama Department of Homeland Security plans to cut back aerial monitoring of the southern border by 50 percent....
"From October to December of 2015," the paper reported, "about 10,560 unaccompanied minors entered Texas illegally through the Rio Grande Valley sector of the U.S. Border Patrol. That marks a 115 percent increase over the same time frame in 2014." With spring just around the corner, those numbers will swell again.
And the illegal immigrant border surge will only be strengthened (and public health risks increased) if Obama gives in to left-wing immigrant groups lobbying the White House to extend "Temporary Protected Status" en masse to upwards of 750,000 Central Americans purportedly fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
TPS is a special amnesty program originally intended as a short-term humanitarian program. As usual, "temporary" means permanent..... Their "temporary" status has been renewed more than a dozen times since the Clinton administration first bestowed it.
One of the biggest champions of the fraud-riddled, illegal immigration-incentivizing TPS program? Chicken Little Chuckie Schumer.
The Beltway posturing of open-borders engineers is enough to make you sick.
We have an immigration policy and procedures to ensure that those who want to settle in our country are qualified. Those who are not, sneak across our borders.
They are called illegal immigrants. Wrong, they are invaders.
These folks come across our southern borders from Mexico and Latin America. If they make it, they hit the jackpot with free food, lodging, health care and subsistence — things they cannot always get in their own country.
They are a liability and must be stopped. They should be denied any benefits, rounded up and shipped back home. We should also put up an impenetrable wall similar to the Berlin Wall that was very effective.
Trump says he will do these things and I believe he will.
If we are serious about our security, then we must do these things. If these invaders can sneak in, so can ISIS.
After reading the Jan. 21 article, “A call for community to welcome refugees,” I am very concerned with the direction the federal and state of Oregon governments are heading.
There are several questions that need to be answered before proceeding with accepting additional refugees.
— Are these people properly and thoroughly vetted? Please remember the San Bernardino 14.
— Are the government officials vetting these people willing to sign an affidavit swearing the vetted refugees will not violate our laws?
— Why are tax dollars supporting refugees while our veterans and military people are not provided needed care? Please remember the reasoning Wounded Warrior Project and others exist.
— Using tax dollars to support refugees while not paying the $18.9 trillion national debt is a fool’s folly.
Michelle McKinley’s Jan. 23 polemic against Rep. Peter Defazio’s failure to support his Democratic colleagues’ protest against immigration raids was something I’d expect from a professor at the University of Oregon, where the left reigns supreme (“DeFazio should back halt to immigration raids”).
McKinley said DeFazio “has a responsibility as a representative of the U.S. government to ensure that these individuals [illegal immigrants] are given due process protections.”
First and foremost, DeFazio is a representative of those who elected him, not the “U.S. government.”
Second, his primary responsibility — as is true for all members of Congress — is to represent American citizens, not foreign nationals.
Unlike most of his Democratic colleagues, DeFazio recognizes that, at least some of the time. He should be commended for that, not condemned.
Would somebody in the “open borders” crowd please explain to America’s working class and poor how continuing to allow the flood of foreigners into our country, both legal and illegal, helps the working class and poor?
Would they also please explain how bringing in tens of thousands of Muslim “refugees” from countries that hate us is going to enhance our security?
Thanks to DeFazio — and shame on his colleagues, who have forgotten their primary duty.
Your recent article about the $10,000 grant from the Oregon Community Foundation to the farmworkers union (PCUN) (See “$10,000 grant awarded to PCUN Farmworker Service Center” on Page A3 of the Jan. 20 edition) displayed a typical journalistic favouritism toward illegal aliens and an indifference toward citizens.
PCUN is basically a union for illegal aliens. Yet you listed various contacts for those interested in getting services from the OCF without mentioning whether taxpayers are funding this organization.
I think we have a right to know if we are supplying the $8.5 million that the OCF has distributed all over the state.
If we are paying for grants to lawbreakers, I’d rather re-route it to help American homeless youth and veterans. Lawbreakers chose to put themselves in a “vulnerable” position by voluntarily breaking our immigration laws. Our own poor didn’t.
Naples Daily News
naplesnews.com
Letter: Traffickers
[January 24, 2016] Posted: 9:05 p.m.
Ed Ruff, Pelican Bay
Recent guest commentators on human trafficking and human slavery in America have been passionate in their desire to free the victims and apprehend the perpetrators. Always missing from their plea and related news stories is any mention of Mexican drug cartels and Muslim terrorists.
The FBI website prefaces the extensive reporting on human trafficking with the following statement, which I posted at www.bypopularamendment.com on Sept. 11, 2013:
"It's sad but true, here in this country people are being bought, sold and smuggled like modern-day slaves. They are trapped in lives of misery, often beaten, starved and forced to work as prostitutes or to take grueling jobs as migrant, domestic, restaurant or factory workers with little or no pay. We're working hard to stop human trafficking, not only because of the personal and psychological toll it takes on society, but also because it facilitates the illegal movement of immigrants across borders and provides a ready source of income for organized crime groups and even terrorists."
It's true that American citizens and legal immigrants are kidnapped and forced into slavery, but when they are there is a police report recording their taking. When the Mexican drug cartels and terrorist organizations smuggle men, women and children across our southern border with Mexico and enslave them, they vanish and are rarely heard from again. They are invisible to us.
The blunt truth is that any person who supports open borders, illegal immigration and amnesty or legal status for those here illegally gives aid and comfort to drug and human traffickers, terrorists and slave owners. Ignoring this truth discredits the guest commentators, news reporters and the newspaper, too.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
TribLIVE | Opinion/The Review
Close the borders
Letter to the Editor
Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, 9:00 p.m.
Updated 55 minutes ago
Donald Trump's immigration policy does not go far enough. We should declare our borders closed entirely for three or four years.
We need to correct and strengthen our immigration laws.
The moratorium would give us time to build the wall between Mexico and the United States. It is enough time to process the illegal immigrants already detained and deport most of them.
There should be no more anchor babies. If you are illegal and caught, within 24 hours you should be on a bus, plane or train headed out of the country. You do not get a free lawyer, free room and board or any rights of American citizens. Illegal is illegal. This should apply to illegal people of any age, even children.
This will also give us time to thoroughly screen Muslim immigrants. The question isn't if there are terrorists among them; the question is how many terrorists are among them. We have enough homegrown and immigrant terrorists here now. This would not be discrimination — nobody gets in.
Let us fix our borders and stabilize our economy. Americans and legal immigrants will benefit from our improved immigration policy.
Kathleen Bollinger
Fawn
http://triblive.com/opinion/letters/9756074-74/illegal-borders-immigrants#axzz3y7v7CYGG
--------------------------------------------------------
The State
JANUARY 23, 2016 12:10 PM
Letters: Haley out of line attacking Trump
Columbia, SC – I watched President Obama’s State of the Union and shook my head. I have never seen a leader so disconnected from the needs of the country and the justified fears of the people. He reminded me of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s disconnected, misguided leadership on immigration. That will soon lead to the death of that nation, as may happen here.
Then I watched as Gov. Nikki Haley failed in her responsibility to speak against the president’s speech and in its stead launched an attack on Republican Party frontrunner Donald Trump.
Watching the president and then the off-base rebuttal by Haley was like being sick at your stomach, followed by having diarrhea. The Republican Party seems to have lost touch with reality, the people it represents and conservatism.
RICHARD GOSNELL
SPARTANBURG
http://www.thestate.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article56149675.html
------------------------------------------------------
SJ Statesman Journal
PART OF THE USA TODAY NETWORK
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Enforce the law addressing illegal immigrants, too
2:47 p.m. PST January 23, 2016
If only Oregon’s Democratic Gov. Brown and the rest of the Democrats in this country felt as strongly about illegal immigrants occupying our country as they do about the refuge occupiers. I especially loved her words, “... I will not stop insisting that federal officials enforce the law.”
A few dozen armed ranchers on a bird refuge and what an outcry. But a few million illegal immigrants in our country, many committing crimes and others possibly terrorists who would like to kill us? Doesn’t seem to matter to these people.
Ginger Gerlach
St. George, Utah
--------------------------------------------------------
BND BELLEVIEW NEWS-DEMOCRAT
January 23, 2016 1:00 PM
Terror threat warrants closing our gates
To Frankie Seaberry, what makes her think that if Obama could do what she is claiming about ISIS and cancer we Republicans wouldn’t be happy? Problem is, not only would he not ever be able to do this, but he hasn’t done many things like he and most of his party want to claim, and instead of taking some responsibility for things that are wrong, they want to blame it all on Republicans. I wonder what polls are saying that Americans are for their kids going to fight ISIS? Where is she getting that from? There are, however, stories about many Americans seeing stuff online from ISIS and deciding they will join up.
Since there is a big possibility of a terrorist coming into the United States with all the other immigrants, we would more than likely — for now, at least — be much safer if we did stop them from coming in. They, (Homeland Security and others,) apparently can’t keep them from coming in completely, with what happened in California. Does Frankie really want another attack like that? Since ISIS can obviously be very clever, I wouldn’t trust them at all. They proved easily that they can get in without much trouble.
She talks about many of the writers being narrow-minded, seems to me like she is the one doing that.
Lori Felts, Worden
http://www.bnd.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article55554640.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The Boston Globe
LETTER
In immigration debate, sympathy for American workers is long overdue
JANUARY 23, 2016
Marcela GarcÍa foretells the woes that would befall companies in the restaurant, agribusiness, construction, landscaping, and newspaper delivery sectors if the United States were to enforce its immigration laws (“The US economy runs on immigrants,” Ideas, Jan. 17).
Not once does she consider the possibility that companies in these industries could just increase wages to attract American workers in place of illegal immigrants. In this regard, she falls in line with the bipartisan consensus that employers are entitled to an endless supply of cheap labor and illegal immigrants are entitled to stay in the country that they broke into.
García seems to evince no sympathy for American workers, many of whom have suffered stagnant wages or have been displaced from the labor force as a result of mass immigration. The resulting sense of economic insecurity is driving the remarkable campaign of Donald Trump. Finally, a candidate is running on the novel platform that the American president should put Americans’ interests first.
Matthew Burwell
Cambridge
------------------------------------------------------------------------
G BILLINGS GAZETTE
Is Ted Cruz a man without a country?
[January 22, 2016] 14 hrs ago
I have known Ted (Rafael) Cruz practically from the day he was born. I, a U.S. citizen, was working for Elf Oil, a French oil company as a geophysicist. We had contracted Rafael Cruz, Ted’s father who owned a seismic data processing business that processed our field seismic data. We had a very close relationship with him for several years. As you are undoubtedly aware, Ted Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in 1970. My wife and I had three offspring that were born in the U.S. They lived their formative years in Canada and ended up marrying Canadians. They in turn blessed us with five grandchildren.
I was made aware when I applied for landed immigrant status allowing me to legally work in Canada that if we had grandchildren born in Canada, they would have to decide before they were 18 years of age if they were to become Canadian or U.S. citizens. If they wanted to become U.S. citizens, paperwork had to be filled out and approved, and before their 18th birthdays, they would have to go back to a U.S. Port of Entry, meet with a U.S. immigration official, take an oath and swear allegiance to the United States. Four of my five grandchildren have certificates signed by the president of the United States stating that they are now citizens of the United States of America. Unfortunately, my oldest grandson failed to honor the birthdate deadline, and it appears that should he want to become a U.S. citizen, he would have to fill out applications like any other foreigner and go to end of the line. I question the validity of that last statement in light of Cruz’s proceeding arguments.
Ted Cruz was born in Canada. Since his mother is a U.S. citizen, Cruz claims that automatically makes him a U.S. citizen. I would think he would have had to have gone through the same paperwork and swear allegiance to U.S. immigration officials. Where is his document from the U.S. president, telling him he is now a U.S. citizen? Why can’t my oldest grandson become a U.S. citizen if he so desires? After all, his mother was born in the U.S.
Ted Cruz renounced his Canadian citizenship some 18 months ago. Could it be he is a man without a country?
Charles E. Schweiger
Billings
---------------------------------------------
BND BELLEVIEW NEWS-DEMOCRAT
January 22, 2016 1:00 PM
Obama puts Muslim in charge
Do you feel safer? President Obama has now appointed a Muslim to the position of Assistant Director for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration. Ms. Noor has little if any experience in the compliance or enforcement fields. Her total experience in government-related work is limited to volunteer work with World Relief Memphis and as activities coordinator for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. She recently completed a month-long research fellowship in Muslim psychology.
Is this like the fox guarding the chicken house? (Or) is this like Obama’s experience as a community organizer before becoming president.
Charles Robinson, Collinsville
http://www.bnd.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article55522560.html
-------------------------------------------------------
Naples Daily News
naplesnews.com
Letter: About time
[January 22, 2016] Posted: 5:16 p.m.
Stanley A. Scheiner, Naples
It's about time. How rewarding that those in our government have taken their heads out of the sand.
The laws that were established specifically for Cuban immigrants recognized their plight with their communist government. As benevolent as the USA is known to be, Americans opened their arms and purse strings to give them a "start up" for their life in our wonderful country.
I have been a resident of South Florida for 48 years, experiencing the Mariel boat lift, an agreement between Fidel Castro and President Jimmy Carter. Certainly a humane, compassionate act. Unfortunately without any vetting and fully aware that Castro exported criminals, the mentally ill as well as trouble makers were among the 125,000 admitted.
Throughout the ensuing time period that has elapsed, I have become aware through personal conversations with honorable Cubans that when there is a honey pot around it is difficult to deny the temptation to get a little.
I am aware of those who continue receiving all the benefits the federal government offers fall into three categories:
1. Those who truly need it.
2. Those who continue their benefits while acquiring work (under the table).
3. According to an article in the Daily News, collecting benefits and then going back to Cuba, the land they fled.
It has taken only 40-plus years for our government to realize this existing scheme at the expense of law-abiding American taxpayers.
Where was the cry of the Cuban-American politicians who, until now, protected the unique benefits their countrymen now receive?
-------------------------------------
myCentralJersey.com
PART OF THE USA TODAY NETWORK
LETTER: Immigration quotas the American way
12:06 a.m. EST January 21, 2016
I have been watching all the debates, both Republican and Democratic. I am myself a Republican, but I don’t like the Tea Party and I hate the NRA. I have heard all the screaming about high taxes, low hourly wage, undocumented immigrants, poor infrastructure, terrorism, bigotry, and I could go on and on.
But there are enough topics nobody wants to mention, even Donald Trump. When it comes to immigration, what about quotas? What about assimilation? What about this country’s Judeo-Christian culture? Until the super-liberals became so aggressive, there were always immigration quotas. The quotas were designed for two reasons — to preserve our basic culture and to satisfy occupational needs. When the potato famine hit Ireland in the 1800s, the Irish arrived under quotas, traveled west and worked assiduously to build the nation’s railroads. They helped to unionize many of those industries. They divested their traditional clothing and became policemen in many eastern cities.
Likewise, the Italians arrived and became shipbuilders and construction workers. The Scandinavians arrived, went to the Midwest and were helpful in establishing the wonderful agricultural farms that we have now. The Asian-Americans arrived on the West Coast, worked in restaurants and established laundries. All of these nationalities arrived under quotas, were documented at Ellis Island and other coastal cities, adopted American clothing and culture and celebrated their native clothing and culture on special holidays. They were all documented and quotas were adjusted according to needs.
Now the liberals cry for open borders. Come on in Nigerians, Bosnians, Mexicans, Guatemalans and whoever else wants to arrive. We have plenty of jobs, lots of benefits and bring your own culture. Muslims can arrive uninhibited. Wear your veils to cover your face, only showing your eyes. Have your women walk 10 feet behind you and beat them if they look at another man. It’s in the Koran.
California now has a population of 50 percent Hispanic. Arizona and New Mexico will follow. Speaking Spanish is a must for many Americans. Dearborn, Michigan is now more than 50 percent Muslim. There is talk of Sharia law. The U.S. has somewhere in the number of 12 million undocumented aliens.
How many will it be 10 years from now? Twenty-two million? Don’t worry about terrorism. They all will be patriotic Americans. How about the infrastructure and education? Don’t worry about it. We won’t let anyone say Merry Christmas or Happy Chanukah. We’ll soon make Ramadan a national holiday. We’ll subsidize all schools and raise taxes. But don’t let my diatribe bother you. After all I’m only a bigot.
Don Fitzpatrick
SUCCASUNNA
------------------------------------------
lehighvalleylive
Violence in Europe bolstering Trump's anti-immigrant stance | Letter
By Express-Times Letters to the Editor
on January 21, 2016 at 11:21 AM, updated January 21, 2016 at 11:24 AM
In response to Chris Lang's condemnation of the GOP's anti-immigrant stance (letter, Jan. 18), I have to wonder he lives in a bubble or is just another bleeding-heart liberal. Scandinavia and Europe are being overrun with immigrants, mostly Muslim, which is virtually killing the economy and causing fear and panic among the country's populace. Yet huge banners hang over the streets in German towns saying "WELCOME REFUGEES."
These "refugees" come by the tens of thousands into Germany, France or wherever. They are welcomed with little or no education, no money, no job skills and no intent to assimilate, because their culture and religion doesn't allow assimilation.
On New Year's Eve there were scores of incidents of beatings, muggings, robberies, groping and rapes on the citizenry in Cologne, Germany, involving refugees. Initially these incidents were not reported by the liberal press and downplayed by the insanely liberal Chancellor, Angela Merkel. They made every attempt to sweep the incidents under the carpet until women took to the streets demanding justice. They feared a backlash against the refugees.
Merkel states these refugees don't understand our values and we must teach them. Does she plan on getting these mobs into sensitivity training? Good luck with that.
Illegal immigration is the sole reason that a buffoon like Donald Trump is currently blowing away all political rivals, but instead of understanding the American voters' rabid anger, their only goal is to destroy him. Well, we'll see, won't we?
Barry Smith
Lower Saucon Township
http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/01/refugee_violence_in_europe_str.html
-----------------------------------------------
OWATONNA.com
READERS WRITE: The immigration invasion
Jeffrey Jackson [January 21, 2016] Updated 3 hrs ago
To the editor:
What can you do? Democracy is not a spectator sport. You need to get involved.
Contrary to popular belief, these millions of illegal residents are a drain on our resources. They are not only making a mockery of our immigration laws but also of our labor laws. There is a fast growing underground economy where millions of illegal workers (construction and farm workers, nannies, etc.) are paid below standard wages and such wages are not always reported to the IRS.
Furthermore, many foreign workers remove a substantial amount of their earnings from our economy by sending those funds back to their homeland. That means such moneys are not spent nor invested here.
Many states have already felt the heavy burden of these illegal immigrants on their schools, medical and other social benefits. How can we ever solve our escalating health care costs of US citizens when we cannot (or will not) control the free and exploitative usage of our resources by those here illegally?
We can no longer ignore the ramifications of the above factors. They are a threat to our national security. The tolerance for "separation" instead of traditional assimilation, the huge illegal numbers here who retain allegiance to their homeland, and the ineffectiveness of protecting our borders from the entry of further terrorists require immediate attention. They are destructive to the unity and identity of our country.
This isn't about race. This is about a culture that is destroying America, and we had better quit pandering to it.
Paul Westrum
Albert Lea
------------------------------------------------------
SJ Statesman Journal
PART OF THE USA TODAY NETWORK
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Screen all immigrants regardless of religion
10:37 p.m. PST January 20, 2016
It seems our official compassion for refugees from the East is highly selective. We are to accept many thousands of Muslims and, to screen them for terrorists, is un-American based on freedom of religion.
Why is it not un-American to totally deny refuge to Christians who are being systematically slaughtered in the Muslim nations?
I think I see a pattern here. Christian officers are being drummed out of our military and any who remain must keep quiet while Muslim religious customs are observed.
I think all immigrants should be screened for terrorist background regardless of the delays involved. Our survival may well depend on it. Look what is happening in Germany, France, Belgium and England.
Elmer M. Werth
Grand Ronde
--------------------------------------------------------
Amarillo Globe News
amarillo.com
Opinion > Letters to the Editor
Letter: Immigration has changed in America
Posted: January 20, 2016 - 5:21pm
This country has a proud history of immigration.
My grandparents came to this country in 1914 from an area in eastern Europe called the Ukraine. It is now the independent country of Ukraine.
I have discovered that most Americans don’t know much about history. Throughout history, the Ukraine was one of the worst areas to live.
My grandparents already had relatives here, which made it easier for them to come. Back then, it was common for family members to come over one at a time.
My grandparents were poor when they came over, and apart from the help they received from their family, they never went on any kind of welfare. In fact, there was not much of any kind of government welfare back then. Also, they did not break the law by coming here — they were legal.
My grandparents did not have much at first, but they knew if they worked hard, they could better their lives.
After my grandfather learned English, he worked in a steel mill for more than 40 years — like so many immigrants did in Pittsburgh back then — and he made a good living for his family.
My grandparents also put a strong desire in their children to better themselves. Their two sons became medical doctors — my uncles.
I’ve discovered that a lot of people want to come to America to go on welfare. Some statistics indicate almost half of immigrants — legal and illegal — are on some kind of government welfare. A lot of immigrants — legal and illegal — teach their children to go on welfare.
Welfare is becoming generational in America, and a lot of Americans are included in this group.
Immigration has changed in America in the past 100 years. Most of the immigrants that came here when my grandparents did went to work. A lot of the immigrants that come now go on welfare.
Malcolm Campbell
Amarillo
http://amarillo.com/opinion/letters-editor/2016-01-20/letter-immigration-has-changed-america
