From: Greg and Marilyn Harter
Columbus
Consider a couple of quotes from people we all recognize:
First, “We must tighten loopholes in the Visa Waiver program, ensure passports can’t be faked and stop terrorists who want to exploit the system.” U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said this on Nov. 19, 2015. And more recently, he said, a “pause” in Syrian immigration “may be necessary.”
Second, “All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.” President Bill Clinton said this in his 1995 State of the Union address.
In the USA, terrorists, illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes here, criminals arriving who are here legally or illegally, are a threat to our freedom. We are a welcoming nation, but these individuals are bent on destroying this country.
Consider the above in light of the recently issued 90-day ban on all immigrants from seven countries until we can strengthen the vetting process. Yes, I know it’s been overturned in a federal court. How did those seven countries initially get identified? A bill was introduced in Congress by U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., which named those seven countries and the threats represented by people residing there and was passed by the House of Representatives, 407 to 19. That’s about as bipartisan as it gets. The bill eventually was attached to a December 2015 spending bill and was signed by President Barack Obama.
Ideas advanced to resolve this spectrum of problems are (sometimes) only good ideas to the speaker and his partisan audience, and often the focus is on his political party. This can’t go on.
We need to listen to each other, consider alternatives and move forward. It would seem as though we are all on the same page, at different times, but in the same general situation. Does it occur to the readers that we’re all in this together? How is a 90-day temporary ban on all people from these seven countries (while we strengthen our vetting process) wrongful? When we reopen our borders to people from these countries, we’ll offer a better place for everybody.
