Letters of the Week: Oct 31 - Nov 4

Please email your letters to editor@ilw.com or post them directly as "Comment" below.

Comments

[Richard Y]

Re : Mr. Robert's letter ID 11/3/2011

In contrary to his letter, we need more tourism dollars to come here and we need to welcome more of them with our hospitality and open arms and we need to reform our visitor visas program. Our non immigrant visas hassles in many emerging countries are rampant with corruption and bribery. It's an open secret that all those visa application fees are cash cows for many of our consulates by denying as many as visa applicants for no reasons but yet they can keep the money. This practice is a disgrace or even closer to criminal and fraud. We have turned away many potential foreigners who genuinely want to come here for conventions and business meetings, to study at our fine universities, or for sightseeing but the hassles and humiliation to secure those visas make them go somewhere else who understand that it's a business opportunity for them and they appreciate their businesses. 30 millions of new upper middle class Chinese travel overseas every year and we get only 13 % of them while European Union get more than 30% because of our stupid visa policies. Many wealthy Asians are gambling in Macau S.A.R. casinos or Singapore ones because of friendlier visa policies there than going to Las Vegas. Why don't we outsource the vetting process to reputable local travel agents to accommodate new upper middle class groups eager to visit our country to gamble in our casinos or having fun in our theme parks, enjoying our cuisines and beautiful scenery and spend their money on shopping at our shopping malls and outlets.

I really don't understand the logic of restrictionists here that tourism is bad for our economy while many Americans are unemployed and it's the cure for our sluggish recovery. I hope that they use and do their maths not just keep embracing their xenophobic and isolationist mind set based on their latent racism and ignorance that will only hurt their economic interests.

[Robert Holzman]

Sorry, I forgot to say I am Caucasian. My family is basically German. My German Grandparents came from Russia. A lot of bigotry. I am married to a beautiful Thai woman. We are having some on going immigration problems. I believe from 1999 when there was a lot of resistance with Mexican immigrants.

[Honza Prchal]

Hypothesis as to the disproportionate clamor over terrorist threats from across the Southern border

In addition to the usual reasons, I suspect that the clamor over the southern border has to do with the very high levels of violence in Mexico, even though cross-border incidents are effectively deterred by the threat of massive DEA and indeed intelligence and FBI retaliation.

Most opinion leaders, be they reporters, filmmakers, immigrants or country music stars (whether Mexican balladeers or Americans seeking to ply their horses with beer) seeking to become action heroes in films reflect those far higher levels of violence and it seems natural, intuitive in fact, that the violence and lawlessness would create a good environment for cross-border terrorism. Deterrence, on the other hand requires a good deal of thinking to understand and an even higher degree of area specialization to understand in practice. We've defended against such threats from Mexico very effectively, and with a high degree of discrimination - and here I use discrimination to mean that relatively few non-threatening Mexicans and Americans are inconvenienced by such measures.

Whereas most Canadians themselves pride themselves on lower crime rates than our own and on a lower international profile and many even think they assimilate immigrants better than we in the United States do. Such a self-image, largely accurate, is hard to square with the reality that disaffected politically motivated mass casualty attackers like Daniel Lapin (his mother changed his name to make it seem less Middle Eastern when she left his abusive father and took this notorious future mass-murder with her) are more likely to kill Canadians or Americans via Canada than they are in Mexico. Mexican sociopaths can easily find an outlet for their activates in hierarchical profit oriented organizations that have to have a purpose to commit such barbarity, and are thus more easily deterred, and foreigners in clannish Mexico stick out like sore thumbs.

Further, there are good reasons to view our Southern border as a lawless zone. Mexico has, for several years now, lost more citizens to civil strife than Iraq has, and despite a theoretical regime of gun control one can easily buy weaponry from both of the Koreas in many of its cities. Fewer such reasons exist along our Canadian border, even along the border with provinces that have legalized pot. Lawlessness and disorder, however, do not necessarily equate to a high threat of terrorism. For one thing, a would be terrorist in Mexico has a higher risk of being surveiled by Mexican or American law enforcement or even co-opted or neutralized by Mexican anti-state forces, say kidnapping gangs on the lookout for an easy mark. It is hard to find a radical mosque in Chihuahua or Monterrey, after all, than in Quebec.

[Honza Prchal]

I forgot to add that Iran has made a decades long push to expand its footprint in Latin American, Venezuela especially, but also in the smuggling and terrorism hot house of the Cold War, Cuba. People see articles like this, even if they don't recall specifically what they are about.

Bloomberg: "Iran gave Cuba a 500 million-euro ($684 million) credit line for reconstruction of its energy system, the Tehran Times reported, citing Abel Salas, the vice president of Cuba's National Institute of Water Resources. Salas spoke in Tehran yesterday at a meeting with Iran's deputy energy minister, the newspaper said, without giving details." http://t.uani.com/sKvWLf
Iran is clearly trying to get something in return.

[Donald M. Miller]

In re. this article, there are several reasons why the focus is on the Mexican border and not on the Canadian. For starters, Canada is a "first world" country with an efficient, functioning police establishment. It has very similar public values as those of the US. Canada has no obsession with "revancha y reconquista", as does Mexico, and Canada is not a breeding place for narco cartels, gang violence, and corruption. Further, the US is not under any danger of a continuous "invasion" of Canadians whose race, ethnicity, language, education, skills, are all far different from those of the majority American population. Americans are in general far more positively diisposed toward Canadians than they are toward Mexicans. Very few, if any, Americans would object to having a typical Canadian family move in next door, while very few, I would guess, would welcome the typical Mexican family moving in. The crime rate among Canadians, both those here and those in Canada, is negligible, while the rate among Mexicans here and in Mexico is astronomical.
Whew!!! How many more reasons do you need? One could easily and appropriately paraphrase Porfirio Diaz and lament..."Poor Estados Unidos, so far from God and so close to Mexico!"
Regards,

[Jim Roberts]

Dear Editor,

Your Nov. 2nd Comment asks why most of our "security" efforts are directed
to our Southern border. While the two are intertwined, the greater efforts
there result from an increased effort to control illegal

immigration and most of it happens there. As you point out, much more
should be done on both issues. All of our "borders", land, sea and air
should be protected much better than they are. Since 9/11, we have not seen
the serious solutions that are needed to protect US, but only token

efforts for show. Visa waivers for some countries should be eliminated and
all visitors should be reviewed, tracked and their departure noted.
If the IRS can keep track of citizens, so can the State Dept. track
foreigners. Our goal should be the interests of America First, not the
interests of Tourists, Tourism, Labor, Foreigners or Others. Illegal entry
and presence here should be a Felony to elevate this major problem

to the status it should have. America can no longer tolerate the
burdens of lax security and entry policies. See: "Culture Wars
Within America"
http://www.newswithviews.com/Wooldridge/frosty711.htm
Our insane trade policies are for the benefit of the Globalist Plantation
Profiteers, not America.
See: "The Number One U.S. Export To China: Waste Paper and
Scrap Metal"
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rep/exporting-waste-to-china.html
The greed of Globalism and other Special Interests must be ended and the

interests of America and it's citizens must be given priority if we are to
maintain any semblance of the Traditional America we have been.

[Catherine M. Kiely]

I would say the emphasis is on the southern border more than on the canadian border because americans do not like hispanics coming here (the gradual yellowing of america). Under the guise of "adhering to the rules and border security" certain politicians in this country in both parties have stirred up the general feeling that we need more and more border security on our southern border "to keep terrorists out" and the less informed public buys it. It is done this way because it would be politically incorrect and racist to say "we don't need any more mexicans or hispanics here". But indirectly that is what they are saying!

Simple answer, and I am not Hispanic, but it is obvious to most informed individuals what is happening here-the only difference is that there is not much americans can do about this situation in the long run whether they like it or not. We are so close to Mexico that this situation of cross border connecting has always been there-it is our history - and will not change regardless of what they do. So again rhetoric and billions in tax payers money being spent for a cause that is bound to fail because it is born out of lies, deceit and does not address the real problem i.e. we need these people here to do the jobs we do not want to do.

Therefore, for years we have needed an "un-skilled" labor visa for them to come here in dignity to work and then go home later to Mexico or wherever they are from south of the border. Our immigration laws currently do not provide this visa. As a result they come here illegally and cannot go back for fear of not getting back in as was the case prior to beefing up the border after 911. Visa options at this time are the H1-B visa (for skilled labor) for which in most cases they do not qualify (Bachelor Degree required) and an H-2 visa that is a lengthy and expensive process of labor certification- a totally ridiculous policy that most firms find too complicated and long-drawn out to handle for an unskilled employee-but again made complicated on purpose so that most firms will not even use the process. Mexicans and other hispanics in this country are second class citizens, treated very poorly in most cases and blamed for being illegal when its not totally their fault. We need them in most cases to do our dirty work and the honorable thing would be to provide them with a visa possibility and their dignity. Therefore, the argument of "keeping out all these terrorists" at the southern border is actually saying "keep out all these hispanics" and the ploy will continue with little or nothing statistically to back up the fact that in the past major terrorist plots did not emanate through the southern border but from the northern border.

[Richard Y]

Re : North Border and Terrorism

Terrorism is not about the borders but it's about ignorance and political correctness on inequality, violence, intolerance, hypocrisy and brainwashing "faiths" based ideology of hatred and how the entire humanity must stand up and speak up that it's enough on those atrocities, inequality, intolerance and ignorance in the name Allah, Jesus, Jehovah and all other deities out there and people of faiths should use more common sense and be critical when they hear sermons that are full of garbage of inequality, hate and intolerance. It's perfectly all right to wiretap all places of worship here in the US and every other countries and none should object to this if their places of worship are places of peace, love and enlightenment not the places of brainwashing for egomaniac ideology that has one objection to conquer the world by any means in the name of faiths and their deities. Places of worship which preach about love, justice and compassion should have nothing to hide and welcome anyone to attend and listen their sermons including NYPD agents. It's imperative that every country in this planet should monitor all places of worship to ensure none is abused as the breading place of violence and intolerance and those who are responsible inciting violence and hatred in the name of faiths and God should be brought to justice before even poisoning more innocent minds.

We have seen the waves of Arabs and Muslims refugees flooding to the West seeking freedom and yet they still want and demand the Islamic Sharia that oppress them and abused by their former dictators, sheiks and absolute rulers acting like the "holier than thou" proxies of God themselves imposing holier than thou morality codes while they are corrupt and partying hard and don't do those codes themselves, it is time for them to wake up and reform their old dogmas that still bless inequality and intolerance and adjust their life in the secular West and embracing full separation of Mosque and State and demanding all Arab world to embrace 100% separation of Mosque and State. Here in the US we have seen that in our politics particularly GOP persons, the ugly mixing up of Church and State anywhere. The amount of ignorance and hypocrisy is just mind boggling. While religions can be good for ones spirituality, they can also be the source of division, violence, intolerance and ignorance. If we really want to win the war on terrorism we must fight them not with multi trillion dollar wars and drones but to hold countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran accountable by spreading and funding ignorance, violence, inequality, hypocrisy and intolerance in the name of Islam and we fight back with counter brainwashing and enlightenment. I hope that fellow Americans educate themselves and restrictionists here can open their eyes and stop being ridiculous by blaming everything on our "amigos" from South, North, East and West of the borders.

[Doug O'Neil]

No disrespect to Mexico, but the writer's assertion that the Northern Border poses a greater security risk is quite simply ridiculous. Despite rumors to the contrary by 911 conspiracy theorists, not a single terrorist plot has ever been hatched in Canada, nor has Canada been a staging ground for terrorist activity within the U.S., unless you consider Justin Bieber a terrorist. Every act of terror in the U.S. has been the work of home grown fringe groups, misguided loners, or foreign nationals who were legally admitted to the U.S. You can't blame Canada for that.

Doug O'Neil

[Richard Gutierrez]

Our history in this country is prejudice towards Mexican people in general. And it dose not matter wether or not you are originally from USA or from Mexico because the vast majority dose not want to see a Mexican succeed , and at border it is prevalent how these people are treated for their color of skin because I seen it for myself and have felt it and gone trough the border on several occasions each year. There is not a terrorist that has come trough Mexico because: @ border crossing anyone that is not of Mexican or American decent is noticed and will be detained for further questions on the reason for being in Mexico and reason for wanting to come to the USA. The Mexican people wait up too and over three hours just to cross, and I bet that in the northern border the white skin people or evan foreigners are not put through what people in southern border go through on daily bases. Did we forget what America went trough during the slavery day's and what everything the civil right movement meant. If the American government let the Mexican people rebuild infrastructure of highways and roads for exchange of a greencard I bet that will stop or curve the violence and improve our relationship with Mexican people , and build our nation to what it once was.
Concerned for Justice

[June Hill]

It seems as though there is much prejudice about Mexican’s living in the country illegally, supposedly due to 9/11, which had nothing to do with Mexican’s, at all. It almost reminds me of how Indians were viewed in America, even though they were born here.

Thank you.

[Robert Holzman]

It's racist. Many Caucasians are very biased about skin color. Some are also biased about the shape of eyes and noses. There are some Chinese that look Asian but have milky white skin color. They don't see their skin color, just they look different.

[Margaret Stock]

Dear Editor,
The Obama Administration has now held up the military recruitment of certain legally present aliens for more than 19 months, and interested recruits are growing frustrated. Letter writing, Congressional testimony, and Congressional complaints didn't seem to do anything to get the Administration's attention, so now the MAVNI applicants are trying to use the White House petition process. They have drafted a very nice petition that they are asking people to sign. I'm passing this link along in hope that you will support them. Here's the link to the MAVNI petition:
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/reopen-mavni-program-enables-department-defense-close-critical-skills-gap-securing-united-states/dRtC2DF2
Here is a link to a New York Times story about the program: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/22recruit.html(popular recruiting program halted)
The White House petition signing process requires you to create a White House petition account, which is a matter of disclosing your email address and name (your zip code is optional). You can elect not to receive future emails from the White House. I am told that using the Mozilla Firefox browser eliminates most problems with using the site, but other browsers also work. It is very difficult to sign up using a smartphone.

[Irleny Insuasti]

As an educator today I am writing to remember everybody that: EDUCATION IS NOT A CIVIL RIGHT, IT IS A HUMAN RIGHT.
Every children in the world have the same rights, also remember that the rights are inherent to all human beings.
Is this the most fair, democratic, and rich country?
Please stop the discrimination for children, if we do not educate children today, we will have more criminals in the future!
Thank you!

[Richard Y]

Re : Robert Algase's blog on Herman Cain (11/1/2011)

The biggest problem with GOP Presidential hopefuls and their supporters and voters respectively is to walk the talks and to end the parade of hypocrisy on many issues. Talking tough on illegal immigration yet getting caught knowingly hiring contractors to do their jobs who employ undocumented immigrants or having nannies or farmers who are the same. Talking about faiths and Jesus but living, talking and acting away from compassion, charity and most importantly honesty as self describe Christians or Mormons. Most of them are so out of touch of common people concerns and issues by referring corporations as "people". Gay bashing speech and yet they must have some hidden scandal of same sex lusts in the past of which might not be exposed yet. It's time to walk the talks.
And the biggest problem with us as voters is to end our ignorance and stupidity to believe and vote in petite issues that should belong to ones' privacy and businesses such as faiths, abortion, euthanasia, "sins", morality, the "right" to marry or get divorced for straight or gay couples etc and focus on what common sense solutions presented by these presidential hopefuls and our future Senators and Representatives.
We also have problem with our constituents that don't want to pay their taxes or not much yet want strong multi trillion dollar defense empire, quality education, infrastructures and health care plus generous pension and entitlements. That's not going to happen. We can't continue to blame all undocumented immigrants while it's actually us who want and create this mess at the first place. It's us Americans who consume the most welfare in the forms of Medicare and Social security, not the amigos who don't have anything to claim those.

Our biggest spending are on maintaining the empire aka defense/military/weapons/wars, Medicare and Social Security not undocumented immigrants and immigration problem. These are the items that many restrictionists here at ilw.com refuse to admit and point while keep ranting and blaming amigos for all the mess in our country budget and economy. It's a shame. None ever questioned whether Social Security is a self saving program or a ponzi scheme that the younger generation always pay the seniors who never paid into the system in their own productive years. I wonder anyone dare to ask this question their grand parents or great grand parents, if they ever paid Social Security taxes when it was established at the first place.

No household can realistically earn $ 20,000 and yet want to spend $ 30,000 every month with $ 10,000 borrowed from left and right and think that should be OK forever. In my opinion, the rich 1 % should be taxed at above 50% rate on income over $ 1 million a year unless they invest in real economy that create jobs not gambling in the fancy casino named Wall St. playing bets on stocks, commodities, currencies and futures. It's atrocious that we reward these high stake gamblers and speculators with nice 15% income tax from "investment and divident" while they don't really create jobs here in the US. And it's time to fully legalize abortion and euthanasia and punish obesity and all unhealthy lifestyles by extra taxes and premium on health insurance to save and lower health care costs and reduce the future welfare pay outs.
Republicans can't be more hypocrite on insisting that fetuses are fully human beings and yet they don't care about their well beings after growing up as children, adults and seniors. None should force parents who don't plan to have babies and can't afford babies nor have the full knowledge and responsibility of having babies to carry out unwanted pregnancies because of their careless act of having unprotected sex or have their birth control fails and expect the rest of us as tax payers' to pay for these babies in more welfare checks. None should force anyone who are terminally ill and in pain who wish to end their life in dignity to hang on because of the objection of some religious freaks who love to meddle on somebody else' businesses. It's time for us voters to vote our future Presidents and Representatives who believe in our values and constitution and more importantly in fairness for all and common sense solutions.

[Harry DeMell]

My hat off to Kenneth Rinzier for his article as well as work uncovering AILA's salaries. If AILA is a bar association then salaries need to be justified. If it's a non-profit advocacy organization, dedicated to helping the poor then there may be no way these salaries can be justified.

[Kip Evan Steinberg]

I recently won a significant FOIA case protecting the due process rights of aliens. Press Release http://www.ilw.com/immigrationdaily/news/steinberg.pdf and Order http://www.ilw.com/immigrationdaily/news/steinberg1.pdf are available.

[richard y]

Re : Gladys Farris letter id 10/31/2011

It costs money to remove 400k a year and more for 20 millions, not to mention the cost to our economy as the potential and regular consumers, home renters or owners, tax payers disappear as the result. Good harvests in Alabama rotting on the fields, many stores, businesses, restaurants are losing their regular customers, rental properties owners are stuck with empty units and more defaults and foreclosures as they can't pay their mortgages as the tenants are running away. It's easy for all restrictionists to say something but they must do their math homeworks. None answer my challenge yet of how much sacrifice in extra dollars they are willing to pay if their isolationism and protectionism rants come true. Slapping Chinese and others imports with tariffs, forcing foreigners to raise their currencies exchange rate, forcing Americans to buy made
in USA only or devaluing the usd and driving all those "pesky illegals" working for cheap will translate to the same thing, higher price for everything and lower purchasing power, yes I am still waiting answers from this folks if they really want it and walk their own talks.

[fulabhai patel]

I believe children human rights and consistutional rights to go to school at u.s.a -do not take objection un docummented,or maxican etc.-----my opinian by F.A.Patel,Advocate.from India.

[Kenneth Rinzler]

Dear Editor:

A few quick comments to respond to Ms. Rost.

Federal law requires Form 990 to be available to not just any member of an organization, but to any member of the general public who asks for it. In my initial email to AILA’s Executive Director, Crystal Williams, I specifically asked her to post the actual form on the membership’s in-house Message Center, rather than her telling people where to go to a third party site, register (albeit for free), and then get it. I followed this up with a similar request on the Message Center, but Ms. Williams never posted the Form 990; I had to. If Ms. Rost wondered why I felt the way I did, all she had to do was ask me and get the facts.

By the way Ms. Rost, who in her disclaimer states that these are her personal views and not those of AILA, fails to note that she was appointed to her chair of AILA’s ethics committee by the President of AILA, so it’s understandable that some may feel her views are slightly colored by that fact. Be that as it may, she failed to address virtually every point I made, such as:

• The issue was never about comparability with other organizations; in fact, as I stated many times if AILA felt their executives deserved higher salaries than they now get, then they should raise our annual dues and increase other revenue streams. In addition, I pointed out how top-heavy the salaries were, especially for an organization that espouses to help the poorer segments of our society, as well as how a 27% raise is unconscionable in a time of 9% unemployment.
• It’s unfortunate that Ms. Rost feels that people who earn $40,000-$50,000 annually are not as competent or dedicated as those who are fortunate enough to earn more. I would like to see her go to an unemployment office or one of the many “Occupy” demonstrations nationwide and stand up and say such a thing.
• I did, in fact, offer constructive solutions on how to improve AILA, both in my open letter to AILA employees and to Ms. Pelta: either stop such obscene salary increases or raise revenue (good luck with selling that to the membership), and poll the membership as to whether we support AILA’s advocacy efforts and positions. I guess she missed that part.

Yours,
Kenneth Rinzler
Attorney at Law
3229-B Sutton Place, NW
Washington, DC 20016-7519
Tel. 202-363-1534
Fax 202-363-1535
www.rinzler.com

[Marc M. Yelnick]

I merely noted Ken's letter, have not studied it, do not want to re-read it. However, two things struck me about Ms. Rost's retort, quoted below:

I wonder why the author felt that the information he was referring to was difficult to obtain ("like pulling teeth")

It was because it was from an organization of which he is a long-standing member! If Ken asked AILA for it, and had to jump through hoops to get it, then yes, like pulling teeth is correct.

The amount of time Ms. Rost's associate spent is not relevant. Mr. Rinzler should not have had to spend more time than one phone call.

Mr. Rinzler questions the "high" salaries of AILA executives - why not, then, for objectivity's sake, bring statistics to demonstrate the salaries of similarly situated executives in other non-profit organizations of AILA's caliber? For instance, here are few numbers to compare....

Ms. Rost is equally guilty of doing what Ken did. Kristina: why not provide us the statistics as to for how many such organizations you obtained statistics? 5? A dozen? 100? More? Did you just cite those with the most generous pay structures to prove your point?

Best regards.

Marc M. Yelnick, AILA #551
So. San Francisco. CA

[Gladys Farris]

Mr. Editor:

No matter how many of the 400,000 are for breaking the law as criminal;however as it may be ICE picks them a deport them in flocks to diminish the many that are here as illegal. The goal is to cut down the number regardless. So counting those who commit crimes and those who are here illegal which is a crime the circle goes on. Obama does not want to stop the deportation so he can get elected.