Illegals and respect for the law
I think we have to start using honest language about immigration.
When you invite me into your home and you share the food at your table with me, I am your guest. However, if while you are sleeping, I break into your home, can I call myself your guest? Maybe an “undocumented guest”? A man selling drugs on the street may call himself an “undocumented pharmacist,” but who is he kidding?
If a person enters my country by sneaking past the Border Patrol, he has committed a federal crime. He is not a guest in my country; he is not an undocumented worker; he is an illegal alien. We do not criminalize him by calling him an illegal alien; he criminalized himself when he crossed the border. Since he broke into my country, he has no right to make demands of me
Picture this: It’s 2 a.m. You and your family are sleeping, and I enter your house through a window. I’m going through your wife’s purse and telling myself that I’m a decent man just trying to provide for my family. I may be thinking that home burglary isn’t really paying off; I may have to try armed robbery of a liquor store. After all, my family has so little, and liquor-store owners have so much. Maybe that’s how some illegal aliens think: I am so poor and America is so rich, so, I have a right to steal.
We must start using the common sense that God gave most of us when we were born. When someone disrespects America by breaking in, stealing or forging a Social Security card and working without authorization and then demands that Americans pay for his health care, his children’s education, food stamps, subsidized housing and welfare, it should bother you.
Illegal aliens steal benefits they have not earned, and we have government minions happy to oblige them. You say the schools in Honduras were lousy and you can’t fill out the welfare application in English or Spanish? No problem! We’ll fill it out for you. You need a driver’s license to get to your illegal job? No problem, you can take the test in Spanish, and we won’t ask about your immigration status. You want to enroll your kids in a public school? No problem, and we’ll throw in free lunches too.
I am not happy when I see illegal aliens demand — not request, but demand — benefits intended for Americans while waving Mexican flags in my face. I feel like a pickpocket just grabbed my wallet and then screamed in my face, “I deserve some of this!” I am unhappy with government workers who like the idea of importing poverty. It’s like America is running out of poor people, and they need to import some more so there will always be jobs for clerks at the welfare office.
Finally, I offer a few words directly to the honorable illegal aliens living in America. You are welcome to my home as my guests. I offer you my friendship and my table. You enrich my life. But when I say goodbye, I ask you to go home because we both know that’s the right thing to do. Please come back and become my neighbor when you can do so legally. We will both feel better knowing that you did the honorable thing.
But I cannot allow you to steal from my country, and I will not allow you to tell yourself that stealing is OK. Respect my laws, and I will welcome you back to my home as a real American and as my neighbor.
WILLIAM SIPPLE
Lafayette, Ind.
Hoodlums stalk the Mall
It is truly pathetic that people can no longer feel safe when walking on the National Mall of the most powerful nation in the world. There were three violent robberies on the Mall in May, with one victim being sexually assaulted. Now, as the nation’s capital enters a “crime emergency,” two additional armedrobberies occurred in one night (“Ramsey institutes ‘crime emergency,’” Wednesday, Metro).
The commanders of the U.S. Park Police promised to provide sufficient patrol coverage to stop violent incidents. Clearly, that was not accomplished. According to one television station, there were only six Park Police officers on duty on the night of July 12. Two of those officers were assigned to stationary posts at the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Four officers patrolling the Mall during the night hours are insufficient to provide effective coverage to put an end to these violent incidents.
Who is responsible for this situation? Is it the Park Police? Or is it the Department of the Interior and the Bush administration? One cannot help but think back to when the former chief of the Park Police was terminated by her superiors in Interior, backed by Bush administration officials. Why was Chief Theresa Chambers fired? Was she incompetent or corrupt? No. Her sin was to be honest about the inability of the Park Police tocarry out its post-September 11 expanded duties with insufficient human resources. It has now become abundantly clear that she was right, and her superiors were tragically wrong.
LAWRENCE SCHWEINSBURG
Crofton, Md.
Action needed on energy supply
We hear a lot of noise being made by the liberal Democrats concerning the soaring costs of oil and gasoline (“Oil hits record near $77; Dow dives below 11,000,” yesterday, page one). Oddly, we never hear them speak of their solution to this problem. Worse, we have yet to see any action on their part — that is, except to block drilling and exploration of vast oil reserves within our own territory.
I am not talking about making some vague and hollow promise they pretend they will keep after the election. I’m talking about real solutions, right now. I’m talking about the welfare of the American people, particularly the poor and the middle class whom they say they champion.
Don’t these supposed constituents deserve action now, before the election?
DENNIS HAYWARD
New Bern, N.C.
Salon’s bias
In her letter to the editor on July 5, Joan Walsh, the editor-in-chief of Salon.com, attempts to refute Senator Elizabeth Dole’s robust defense of Judge Terrence Boyle. Miss Walsh states that Salon is a “news organization, not a left-wing advocacy group,” and that Salon “takes accuracy very seriously.” Both claims are false.
As Mrs. Dole made clear in her editorial, it is now well established that the infractions alleged against Judge Boyle in the Salon.com series are either plain wrong or truly trivial. Take the Quintiles case as an example. Contrary to Salon’s report, Judge Boyle did not own Quintiles stock during the pendency of a Quintiles case — he sold it in 2000, before the case was even filed (a letter from his accountant, made available to all senators and staff, confirms the facts).
Salon’s dogged pursuit of false or immaterial issues suggests that Salon is less concerned with accuracy and substance that its own advocacy. Despite Ms. Walsh’s assertion that Salon.com is a “news organization, not a left-wing advocacy group,” the fact is that the so-called “investigation” published by Salon was nothing but a piece prepared by a reporter for the “Center for Investigative Reporting,” as part of a project “primarily funded” (in its own words) by George Soros’ Open Society Institute.
We’re frankly surprised that Miss Walsh now attempts to distance Salon from its liberal, left-wing heritage. David Talbot, the founder of Salon, has proudly stated: “I come out of a tradition of liberal journalism, left-wing journalism.” And Miss Walsh, for her part, stated in an interview given upon her ascension to the editor-in-chief position at Salon, that she was depressed that “so many of us liberals” were surprised that President Bush won the 2004 election.
Furthermore, when asked: “As a left-leaning site that incorporates both news and opinions, what have been the major issues arising from George Bush’s reelection?” Miss Walsh opined that “there’s plenty of room for smart critical coverage, both of the Bush administration and its hubristic overreaching on Social Security and Iraq and the deficit, as well as of the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party.”
Strictly a “news” organization? On the contrary, there appears to be “plenty of room” at Salon for left-wing advocacy of its own views, and the most recent Soros-funded attacks on Judge Boyle fall squarely in this camp.
LARS H. LIEBELER
Washington
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