Francis Fukuyama loses me in the second sentence of "Immigrants and Crime: Time for a Sensible Debate"
(op-ed, July 26), when he talks about "those who oppose immigration."
No, most people oppose illegal immigration. There is a distinct
difference that too many people refuse to realize in this issue.
My wife and I traveled to
Romania more than 10 years ago on a church trip. We met a young
Romanian woman who served as a translator for my wife and me. Later, we
assisted her in trying to obtain a temporary visa so that she could
travel to the U.S. We agreed that we would be financially responsible
for her during her time in this country. After many months of meetings
between her and American embassy personnel in Bucharest, the embassy
denied her visa on the grounds that "she did not have sufficient reason
to return to Romania at the conclusion of her visa."
You can imagine the
distress I felt, knowing our policy along the U.S.-Mexico border. I
guess I should have instructed her to fly to Mexico and then walk across
the border to the U.S. Then she could have stayed as long as she
wanted.
Rod Kelly
Spring, Texas
Mr. Fukuyama uses the
term "developing world" to describe an "undeveloped world." The term may
be politically correct, but it is definitely a misnomer. "Developing
world" implies that things are getting better. All indicators point
otherwise in Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba and Peru—the list gets too long.
Reality should trump political correctness, especially when the author
knows better.
Hal Hunt
Walla Walla, Wash.
Mr.
Fukuyama's article perpetuates the myth that those on the Mayflower and
other pre-1776 arrivals were "immigrants." The vast majority of these
free settlers were "colonists" who were moving within the jurisdiction
of one nation. They were not emigrating from one nation state to
another. They became the founding stock that created the United States, a
country which subsequent waves of immigrants were all too eager to
join.
Even
with zero immigration after 1780, the founding population would today
have grown to about 150 million people, which is about half of today's
U.S. population. The "nation of immigrants" myth only stems back to the
last century and is part of a broader political agenda. Isn't it time
that the nonimmigrant half of the U.S. population is correctly
acknowledged within the historical context of this nation?
Tim Salsbury
Whitefish Bay, Wis.
The people who pay the
cost of illegal entry into the U.S. are American citizens and taxpayers.
For those wishing to enter the U.S. legally, there exists a process and
a legal method for entry, residence, work and ultimately for
citizenship.
The clear and present
problem is the lack of enforcement of legal entry rules on the U.S.
borders and of labor laws, as both seem to be the minimum requirement
for breaking the current cycle of U.S. illegal entry and immigration.
Oversimplifying the problem does no one any good.
Dave Blide
Hawthorne, N.Y.
Mr. Fukuyama's point is
that not all here illegally are committing heinous crimes. True enough.
However, to recategorize their collective status from illegal, an
undisputed fact, to "informal" conjures up memories of George Orwell's
"1984," where "newspeak" became de rigueur.
Terry Hubbard
El Dorado Hills, Calif.
Ironically, Mr. Fukyama
provides the best argument against amnesty: "What illegal immigrants to
the U.S. have done is recreated the informal (illegal) system within our
borders." The path to citizenship can't start with an illegal act.
Illegal means not legal, not informal.
Paul A. Cyr
Bethlehem, Pa.
Note from KBJ: Nobody would translate "I am against rape" as "I am against sex." Why, then, do so many people translate "I am against illegal immigration" as "I am against immigration"? Is it stupidity? Malice?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 