Web Letters: Change Immigrants and Labor Can Believe In

One and a half million jobs lost. California is going broke. Immigrants yes, illegal immigrants no. Bacon needs to understand that as our newly elected President Obama has said , "This is a nation of laws. " Maybe Washington, DC, can get off its butt and enforce the laws.

No more anchor babies, change the laws that allow for the whole family to stay here after the mother crosses the border to have in her kid in a border town. The school districts cannot keep up with educating Mexico nor the hospitals giving free services.

Start enforcing the laws, increase the raids, and let's change the laws so it is even harder to cross the border and end up with amnesty. Reagan gave amnesty years ago. No, it is not time again.

One bright spot of this economic downturn is that some illegal immigrants are returning home since they cannot find work in the building industry.

Along with the illegals who want to work hard and send a lot of their money back to Mexico come the drug dealers, criminals and gangs.

I hope there is some change. I hope the laws finally start getting enforced, from the businesses that illegally hire these workers to workers themselves having to go back home.

I would have to leave France after three months if I did not have a working permit, why do we allow illegals to stay and benefit from our welfare and educational systems. It's tragic. Let the teenagers here have the fast food jobs and our own skilled workers have construction jobs.

Christos Sanchez

Huntington Beach , CA

You're an idiot! Yes, immigrants should be punished for using false Social Security numbers--and by the way, they steal a lot of these Social Security numbers as well. Have you ever had your identity stolen? You would feel differently if you had. These people are in this country illegally. They bring wages down in this country and bring crime and all their poor family members with them who use up our resources and lie to get social services. They cost this country millions if not billions of dollars every year. Have you ever had to live in a neighborhood with them? No, I don't think you have, or you would feel differently. They bring down your schools and property values. Their homes look like trash. They show no community pride. You need to get out of that liberal mind of yours and think outside of your elite box. Anything goes with you liberals.

DEBORAH MITCHELL

Columbus, OH

I enjoyed the article by David Bacon speculating about Comprehensive Immigration Reform. My concern is and always will be the fact that CIR was anything but "comprehensive."

Labor interests would have been well served by the CIR proposals that failed. Hundreds of thousands of families that contain a US citizen spouse or child with a family member subject to a three-year, ten-year or even permanent bar to admissability to the US would still be suffering if the CIR bill that failed were brought back in its original form.

The important thing to remember is that the nuclear family is the foundation of our society. Families that were separated by the harsh and draconian provisions of current immigration law need help as well as seasonal labor.

CIR should fix family immigration first, and repair the damage that has been done to so many families by the heartless enforcement-only administration. It will serve our society more intelligently to bring back workers who have families that were forced onto public assistance by the deportation of the bread winner during the Bush administration.

nancy kuznetsov
American Families United

Oak Ridge , TN