Letters of the Week: Jan 14 - Jan 18

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Comments

[Nolan Rappaport]

I agree with Cyrus Mehta that anti-immigrant groups have always existed and probably always will. I suspect that hatred and distrust of strangers has its roots in the earliest days of civilization when groups of men banded together to hunt and protect their families. Seeing a band of strangers approaching your village in those days almost certainly elicited fear and deep distrust. But that stopped being an appropriate way to view strangers thousands of years ago. In any case, it is a mistake to cast the debate over immigration reform into an "us and them" battle with "them" being "The Immigrant Haters." That has the effect of saying to people who oppose our views that nothing they say is sincere or worth considering. That their views are based on hatred, not reason. They are anti-immigration. That is not a path that leads to the passage of comprehensive immigration reform.