Letters to the Editor
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Immigration not simple problem
People often talk about how their ancestors were immigrants, but they were legal, so that's different. Well, before the Chinese Exclusion Act, all immigration was legal. There was no such thing as an 'illegal immigrant' till we decided we wdidn't like the Chinese. And those immigrants coming from Europe were starting to be kind of swarthy, so we added them to the newly created 'illegal' category. So yes, racism was historically the root of our immigration laws. However, that doesn't necessarily still apply. I agree that there is a huge problem with wage-deflation. But when someone loses their job at a meat-packer (an immigrant-dependent industry for generations - ask Poles in Chicago) because the owner wants to pay less than $15 an hour, the person to blame is the owner, not the immigrant. If we had laws mandating a living wage, the jobs would not be here for illegal immigrants, and they wouldn't come. And if NAFTA required the same working conditions in Mexico as in the US, they wouldn't come.
The most likely cause of drunk driving accidents around where I live are teenaged drivers. Should they be deported?