Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:25:36 -0500
From: Brenda Denzler
Subject: Our County Commissioners Rock–or Off Their Rockers?
You may be proud, Ann, but I am disappointed. The very definition of discrimination is to apply different standards to people based on irrelevant factors such as their race, ethnicity, gender, etc. If we have laws, those laws ought to apply to everyone, without exception.
We have immigration laws. Many, many people who want to come to this country go through the legal procedures to do so. Most of them don’t have the luxury of sharing a border with us, so they can’t sneak in illegally. They are forced by circumstances to abide by the laws. One group of people, however, takes advantage of our shared border to enter this country illegally–flouting its laws–rather than use the same legal channels that everyone else has to use.
It’s discriminatory for our country — and our county — to expect that in general our immigration laws will be administered and enforced, except in the case of those who sneak in illegally. For *them*, some people think, we should turn a blind eye to our own laws, just as the illegal immigrants have done.
I’m all for immigration. In the end, we’re all immigrants at some point in our familial past. I will live alongside immigrants, work alongside immigrants, share meals with immigrants, and be happy if our families intermarry. As long as those immigrants came here legally, with respect for the law.
If we really do need this mass of undocumented works and the unskilled labor they tend to bring, then we need to change our immigration laws to allow more of such workers to come in legally — and then enforce those new laws.
In my opinion, if you’re an immigrant and you came here legally, a thousand welcomes to you. If you came illegally, get out. I don’t care whether you’re Hispanic, African, Asian, Eastern European, Arabic…. It don’t matter. Get out. You have broken our laws. Get out.
Brenda Denzler