Letters to the editor

OPINION:

Responding to a slur

In the article (“Hispanic group aims to stop ’wave of hate,’ “) about the failure to pass the Senate immigration bill, Cecilia Munoz, leader of the National Council of La Raza, seems to feel that enforcing our laws is racist.

She states that she is interested in preserving the Spanish language as she rails against making English the nation’s official language. She also is in favor of increasing the amount of money resident immigrants send to their home countries rather than spending it here to bolster our economy.

Mrs. Munoz professes that she is only supporting legal immigration, but she is actually supporting efforts to give amnesty to more than 12 million illegal aliens residing in the United States while doing everything possible to defeat any attempt to secure our borders.

BYRON SLATER

San Diego

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As a Hispanic immigrant, I recoiled at the suggestion by Cecilia Munoz of the National Council of La Raza that “a wave of hate” sank the immigration bill last month — a wave that included efforts to make English the official language (“Hispanic group aims to stop ’wave of hate,’ ” Page 1, Sunday).

Though a handful of Hispanic leaders may oppose making English the official language, this position puts them at odds with 83 percent of Americans and 65 percent of Hispanics who favor official English, according to recent Zogby polls.

It bears noting that 64 senators, including 17 Democrats, voted for the Senate amendment because in order to continue this nation’s proud history of assimilation, government policy must lead the push for English learning among immigrants.

Had I and millions of American immigrants been given multilingual services and a linguistic crutch at every turn, we would have become part of a permanent underclass, shut out of opportunity and unable to attain the American dream.

Had we gone to Mexico, we would have been expected to learn Spanish. Had we gone to Japan, we would have been expected to learn Japanese. We came to the United States, and it was our duty to learn English.

“A wave of hate” did not sink the immigration bill. Something called common sense and the understanding that a minority of people should not dictate national policy did.

MAURO E. MUJICA

Chairman of the board

U.S. English Inc.

Washington

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National Council of La Raza leader Cecilia Munoz clucks about Americans’ “discomfort with Latinos.” She trivializes such discomfort as arising in a “wave of hate.” If there are indeed such things as “Hispanic communities,” those communities have provoked our discomfort with their repeated noisy demands that American laws be winked at and that American institutions assimilate to newcomers, especially in the arena of language.

Don’t take my word for it, though. Instead, consider an article from the Los Angeles Times last summer (“6 + 4 = 1 Tenuous Existence,” July 28, 2006). The article quotes Alejandra, a Mexican woman, who, with several sisters, originally entered California illegally and then somehow gained legal status.

Nearly a decade ago, the sisters fled California. As the article explains, “[Alejandra] and her family moved to [Lexington] Kentucky, where a friend said there was more work and there were fewer Mexican immigrants bidding down the wages for unskilled jobs.” Thus, in Kentucky, they can “earn more than they did in Los Angeles, in a city where the cost of living is lower. Kentucky is now their promised land, and they talk about California the way they used to talk about Mexico.”

Said Alejandra in the article: “What we weren’t able to do in many years in California, we’ve done quickly here. We’re in a state where there’s nothing but Americans. The police control the streets. It’s clean, no gangs. California now resembles Mexico — everyone thinks like in Mexico. California’s broken.”

If Mexican immigrants working unskilled jobs leave Los Angeles because they don’t like the effects of the mass influx from Latin America, is it terribly surprising or outrageous that Americans also dislike what’s happening? And for this we’re excoriated by a spokesperson for an ethnic chauvinist organization?

PAUL NACHMAN

Bozeman, Mont.

Principles for victory

I am writing in response to Thomas Sowell’s Friday Commentary column, “After Iraq: Part II.” Even though I agree with Mr. Sowell’s contention that politicians can fumble the course of war, I have to disagree with him on several important points. First, the second war in Iraq reflects the changing nature of warfare. We can look at the Israeli and Palestinian stalemate of last summer for indication that the duration and rhythm of 21st-century warfare has been transformed thanks to asymmetry.

War in the Middle East does not have neat bookends but rather consists of organized short-term bouts of conflict and violent attacks without any political resolution. This is a war of attrition; thus the notion of the “long war.”

Mr. Sowell purports that the military has secured victory. Has it really? If our exit from Iraq incites more violence and produces the conditions for the establishment of new centers of religiously dominated totalitarianism, I do not think anyone would call this a victory.

Furthermore, Mr. Sowell sees institutions and cultures as intransigent objects and the products of lengthy social evolutions that are difficult to transplant from one place to another. The process of globalization and free markets, however, shows that institutions are influenced and can change without waiting a century. He points out that establishing security and a culture that respects the rule of law is fundamental; I would remind him that this is not unattainable.

On one final note, America will assume leadership in the world in this century if we stick to our principles. We stand for a stable and democratic world that shares in the vision of freedom and liberal democracy as the maturation of sound governance. To shy away from these ideals would undermine our responsibility to the rest of the world and humanity.

PHILIP KAO

Naples, Italy

Walter Tejada a ’criminal enabler’

Walter Tejada, vice chairman of the Arlington County Board, was quoted in a story on July 13 regarding the resolution on illegal aliens that was passed unanimously by the Prince William Board of County Supervisors (“County’s alien crackdown may spread to other areas,” Metropolitan):

“’A vocal, angry minority in their locality has manipulated the system to convince the political leaders to enact a very punitive, anti-immigrant resolution,’ said. ’We now see in Prince William County an example of government-sanctioned xenophobia. If anger and divisiveness is what they intended to achieve, they have succeeded.’”

Criminal enablers like Mr. Tejada misuse the term “immigrant” to remove any notion of illegality. He uses the term to place these lawbreakers on par with those who came to this country legally, just like himself, with a firm desire to assimilate, learn English and become part of the fabric of this great republic. Mr. Tejada and his leftist comrades on the board believe they can dupe the legal citizenry with their faux use of the term immigrant, basically dishonoring the term in order to divide the community even more.

The term “undocumented” didn’t work; now misusing a term that instills a sense of honor on those who earned the right to immigrate legally is core to the current malfeasance under way on the Arlington County Board.

Mr. Tejada knows that the malcontents who comprise the radical open-border illegal-alien-protection groups that he supports cannot compete with grass-roots groups like Help Save Manassas.

ROBERT MOLLEUR

Manassas