To the Editor:
Re “In Border City Talk, Obama Urges G.O.P. to Help Overhaul Immigration Law” (news article, May 11):
Many of the reports of President Obama’s recent speech on immigration in El Paso have suggested that the president’s focus on immigration is an attempt to pacify Hispanic voters.
No doubt, the issue of immigration is of utmost importance for many Hispanics, but as the president said, it is also a crucial issue for all Americans because economic growth depends upon a rational immigration system.
Indeed, a recent Pew Research Center report found that fully 72 percent of the American public, including a majority of Republicans, support the principles of comprehensive immigration reform as advocated by President Obama in his speech on Tuesday and by President George W. Bush before him. Most Americans, of all political ideologies, ethnicities and religious traditions, realize that neither mass deportation nor amnesty is a good solution to our present predicament and that comprehensive immigration reform is the only reasonable solution.
MATTHEW SOERENS
Glen Ellyn, Ill., May 11, 2011
The writer is co-author of “Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion and Truth in the Immigration Debate.”
Note from KBJ: Amnesty is a nonstarter. The people who are here illegally must be deported.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 