CAIR - Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform

 
 
Selected Letters to the Editor on Colorado, overpopulation, and immigration (2003)
 
this year, 2002, 2001, and 2000 - many are excellent.
 
Also see CAIR Letters to Elected Officials
 
We encourage you to write your own letters to the editor. The following letters have been published and are excellent examples. Also see our articles section for facts, "hot" topics and current background information.
 

 
Government failing the people on immigration - Colorado Daily, August 7, 2003
 
Your editorial ("Vigilantes not needed in immigrant debate" 8-1-03) hit the nail on the head - that our government permits illegal immigration because corporate interests want cheap labor. But you failed to recognize that the vast majority of Americans, in poll after poll, say they want vastly reduced legal immigration and no illegal immigration.
 
Congress could, if it chose to do so, limit legal immigration to replacement levels and insist that existing laws on illegal immigration be enforced. Neither is happening. As a consequence, the corrupt government of Mexico is exporting its surplus population - its uneducated working poor - while doing little to better the lives of people in Mexico.
 
Mass immigration is driving U.S. population to double this century, practically within the lifetimes of children born today. This will mean twice the sprawl, congestion, housing, overcrowding and crime, twice the number of schools, hospitals and prisons, and twice the pollution and drawdown of natural resources in our country as well as in other countries from which we derive imports.
 
This is a future that doesn't have to happen, were Congress and our President to listen to the wishes of the people.
 
Fred Elbel, Director, Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform
 

 
Illegal alien free-for-all has become absurd - Colorado Daily, July 28, 2003
 
I got a very big kick out of your article ("AFA roundup termed racist," July 19).
 
You know the open-borders wackos are freaking out and, without an argument to tender, they go to what they know best: the silly, fatuous charge of racism (Oh, please don't call us that, please, please, please!) We really owe these people a great big thank-you for letting us know they already have thrown in the towel.
 
It's humorous that Lisa Duran, of Rights for All People, would question why the government targeted "undocumented immigrant workers." Ms. Duran, it is because they are felons - they are in the U.S. illegally. They weren't "undocumented," they had documents, and that's in part why they were arrested.
 
This case goes to show just how absurd the whole illegal alien free-for-all has become. It's time to put an end to the lawlessness.
 
Paul Carmichael, El Jebel
 

 
Graham is right - Colorado Daily, July 28, 2003
 
For Vikki Otero to call Terry Graham's views as "racist" and "zenophobic" is dead wrong. That is a classical defense mechanism of the pro-illegal immigrant crowd when they don't now what else to say.
 
Well, we all know that Otero is wrong.
 
Doesn't she have a better argument than that? C'mon.
 
It is a fact that 25% of our federal prison populations are comprised of illegal aliens. We are importing crime with the uncontrolled flood of illegal aliens into this country.
 
Americans want this to end. If our immigration laws were enforced, then these rapes in Boulder by the "Spanish-speaking Hispanic males" - aka" illegal aliens - would never have occurred.
 
If the Boulder PD would protect U.S. citizens and enforce our immigration laws, Boulder would be a safer place for law-abiding U.S. citizens.
 
And why should we be importing rapists and sexual predators who hold barbaric attitudes towards women? Do we need to add to the pool of home-grown criminals? Why should American females be sacrificed at the altar of multiculturalism?
 
Lindy Ashner, Elizabeth, CO
 

 
Graham's stand courageous - Colorado Daily, July 28, 2003
 
Vikki Otero's letter in the July 21 edition of Colorado Daily entitled, "Graham is no feminist," is rude, crude and non-amusing. It seems all Open Borders advocates have difficulty with citizens who wish to protect the sovereignty of this country and cannot defend their position other than playing the racist and xenophobic card.
 
While Ms. Otero may believe and dislike what she read from Ms. Graham, who is she to make judgments on the content of Ms. Graham's concern for sexual assault victims being victimized by people who shouldn't be here in the first place?
 
Perhaps it would behoove Ms. Otero to help victims and not rail against the points Ms. Graham so eloquently made. It's obvious our immigration system is flawed and one can only best effect change by approaching those who head the system to find ways to make positive change as Ms. Graham puts forth.
 
We have enough problems with our own criminals who are citizens of this country. One has to question why Ms. Otero would want to import rapists from other c ountries.
 
Feminist or not, one has to applaud Ms. Graham's honesty and her quest to protect women of this country who fall victim to illegal aliens. It's obvious our government is not doing anything about this serious problem.
 
Jan Herron, Evergreen, Colo.
 

 
Feminism, rape and 'cultural baggage' - Colorado Daily, July 28, 2003
 
It gives me no pleasure to report that violent sexism is alive and well in much of the world. Deluded feminists who believe the multicultural fantasy that all cultures are morally and behaviorally equivalent are simply not paying attention to the evidence. Letter writer Vikki Otero falls into this category by ignorantly castigating Terry Graham for pointing out the rash of rapes by Hispanic males in Colorado.
 
Latin culture is still imbued with machismo and the belief that brutality against women is a man's right. The Washington Post reported last year that "when it comes to punishing sexual violence against women, surprisingly little has changed in a century. In many parts of Mexico, the penalty for stealing a cow is harsher than the punishment for rape." In 19 of Mexico's 31 states, the laws require that statutory rape charges be dropped if the rapist agrees to marry his victim.
 
Illegal aliens do not change their stripes just because they cross the border: they bring their repulsive cultural baggage with them. Furthermore, those foreigners who disrespect our borders are unlikely to honor the rights of women. Therefore the failure of our government to enforce existing immigration laws put women in particular at risk for violent crime.
 
Brenda Walker
Project Director, www.ImmigrationsHumanCost.org, Berkeley, CA
 

 
Unchecked growth is unsound policy - Daily Camera, July 27, 2003
 
Your lead article "Population explosion likely in Africa, Asia" emphasized population growth in other countries, barely noting in passing that "the U.S. population is expected to grow by 45 percent to 422 million in 2050, paced by a stable birth rate and high levels of immigration." The implications of this single statement are distressing indeed.
 
The United States has the highest population growth rate of all developed countries and at more than 291 million, is among the most populous countries in the world. The Census Bureau tells us that if current trends continue, U.S. population will double this century, practically within the lifetimes of children born today. Colorado is growing at twice the national rate.
 
This growth will require roughly twice as many houses, cars, roads, prisons, hospitals, schools, and twice the demand for water. It will result in twice as much congestion, pollution, sprawl and pressure on our dwindling natural resources and the resources that we draw from other countries.
 
It is true that native-born Americans reached replacement-level fertility (children per woman) in 1972. What, then, is causing our population to double? Mass immigration will be responsible for 70 percent of our population doubling.
 
It is immeasurably short-sighted to perpetuate this unending growth with reckless disregard for future generations. Yet this is a future that does not have to happen. Congress could take a significant step toward sustainability simply by returning immigration to traditional, replacement numbers.
 
Fred Elbel, Lakewood, CO
 

 
High immigration rate driving water woes - Denver Post, July 24, 2003
 
As a Colorado native who has spent much of her life fighting the Animas-La Plata Project, I concur absolutely with Phil Doe's June 30 assessment that this project is a taxpayer subsidy for the filthy rich and an environmental disaster for us all ("Utes profit from water boondoggle," June 30).
 
But we need to address a more fundamental issue: Why are we moving into a dangerous future where water will be more valuable than oil?
 
Thanks to the highest immigration in history, driving 70 percent of our growth, the United States is growing at 1.1 percent a year, a doubling time of 60 years or less. (In contrast, Europe grows at 0.1 percent a year, a doubling time of 600 years!) The West grows at between 2.8 and 4.0 percent a year, a doubling time as low as every 18 years. That's twice as many people demanding water, housing, education, infrastructure and medical care!
 
NASA and the Scripps Institutes warn that growth and drought might mean the West is headed for a global-warming train wreck. Yet, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, the Bush administration and others who fictitiously call themselves "leaders" dodge discussion of this demographic explosion and the possibility of 1 billion Americans by 2100.
 
Kathleene Parker, Los Alamos, N.M.
 

 
U.S. jobs given away - Denver Post, July 25, 2003

 
Re: "Keep guest-worker program," July 22 editorial.
 
It seems you've gone off the deep end. Who do H-1B visas benefit? The companies that use H-1B workers extensively seem to be going belly-up: Worldcom/MCI went bankrupt, TeleTech is laying off hundreds, and the disasters at US West/Qwest are legion.
 
Conversely, there are at least a half- million unemployed information-technology workers in the U.S. who, in my experience, are generally better-trained and more qualified than the H-1B visa workers who are brought in to replace them.
 
The lesson to young people is clear: Don't take computer science in college, because Congress will just give your job away to a foreigner. We are destroying our future info-tech capabilities by the short-sighted importation of unneeded foreign workers.
 
CHARLES E. CORRY, Colorado Springs
 

 
Labor shortage a lie - Denver Post, July 25, 2003

 
Your editorial is at best just an attack on Tom Tancredo, and at worst an insult to those of us in the high-tech profession. The number of high-tech jobs lost in the last few years is staggering, and a lot of those jobs are gone forever.
 
In case The Post hasn't noticed, this country is in a financial disaster, and every job is precious. When high-paying jobs are eliminated or replaced by low- paying jobs, it hurts the whole country. Jobs are leaving this country in droves. Do we really need H-1B labor?
 
The H-1B program exists because of lies (high-tech labor shortage) and those companies that make money sponsoring these individuals. Period. It's not good for America. While it's true we do have valid labor shortages in certain fields, those shortages are not as big as the injustice of the H-1B system. And nobody is running to the airport except the pimps who brought them here.
 
JOHN COGAN, Woodland Park
 

 
Jobs won't return - Denver Post, July 25, 2003

 
The problem with H-1B visas will not correct itself in the near future. The number of foreign "professionals" working in the United States will not fall. I will admit that the number of foreign "professionals" from India may fall, but only because U.S. companies are now moving U.S. jobs to India to take advantage of even lower wages. And other countries have learned by India's example.
 
Today, there are 650,000 high-tech jobs in India. How did they get there? The government of India subsidized the cost of Indian employees moving to the United States to work under the H-1B visas.
 
FRANK MCALLISTER, Colorado Springs
 

 
Not immigrants - Denver Post, July 25, 2003

 
Re: "Tancredo pandering," July 23 Open Forum.
 
As a high-tech worker with years of experience working with foreign workers, I must point out the misconceptions in Ravi Kanaskar's letter. Foreign H-1B high-tech workers are not immigrants. They are here on a temporary basis, only for the duration of a job assignment with a specific employer.
 
He says foreign H-1B workers are more "dedicated." Certainly. They are virtual indentured servants to their employers, who routinely exploit the workers' "willingness" to work long hours without complaining.
 
It is indeed documented that these foreign workers cost employers less in terms of wages and taxes. It is abundantly clear that these foreign workers make a small fortune working here when viewed in terms of the standard of living in the country to which they will return. It is not documented and particularly not evident that the Labor Department ensures that H-1B visas are not issued for jobs with an abundant supply of workforce. With thousands upon thousands of American high-tech workers unemployed across America, how could the Labor Department allow any foreign workers at all?
 
FRED ELBEL, Lakewood
 

 
Govt. giving away jobs - Denver Post, July 23, 2003

 
Re: "Tancredo wants to end program for guest workers," July 18 business news story.
 
Thank God for elected officials like Tom Tancredo! Congress, as a whole, has totally abandoned the American worker. The H-1B visa workers were brought here in numbers far exceeding 1 million in the last six years. They served to keep wages down for American workers; and they hurt the young worker entering the job market and the older American worker who needed to keep his job.
 
When the tech boom crashed - along with the rest of the economy - our government didn't do anything about getting these workers out of the country. They brought families and expected to stay in this country forever - and have stayed in this country despite the very serious unemployment and drastic underemployment of the American worker. The unemployment and underemployment is especially serious among high-tech workers. Those who are offered new employment have seen the wages being offered in the field (for jobs identical to those in 2001) drop by as much as 50 percent - and with no benefits - as corporations take advantage of the high unemployment rate and the superabundance of foreign workers.
 
PATRICIA O'CONNOR, Littleton
 

 
There is no reality of security in age of illegal immigration - Colorado Daily, July 17, 2003
 
American citizens trust our federal government to keep a safe watch over us. We have valid concerns about homeland security after 9-11, an event that will forever be etched in our minds. The public voice has called for securing our borders, securing our airports and securing our beloved country from this threat of terrorist's attacks.
 
Tuesday evening I settled myself in for a normal evening of 'watch the news and go to sleep', and what did I hear? I listened to 9News start off with their top story, a story about how 27 illegal aliens were arrested at the Air Force Academy for having false Social Security cards, false ID cards and most disturbing, possessing security passes at the academy.
 
Now, this is supposed to be one of Homeland Security's top priorities, securing our weapons bases. The airports are also supposed to be a top priority in the Homeland Security taskforce, yet 100 employees were arrested at DIA for also possessing false IDs and Social Security cards this year.
 
Although I highly commend the Air Force for beginning this investigation leading to these arrests, I also question just how we should be trusting a proposed guest-worker program or trusting the Mexican Consular ID cards to be valid, when apparently these illegal aliens were able to slip through the cracks and work at the base, and work at our airport, intially bypassing our Homeland Security? How much time does an Al-Queda or Saddam group need to inflict terrible damage upon on our country, when they feasibly could possess security passes, as these fraudulent employees did?
 
We mustn't forget that the original nineteen 9-11 terrorists also had in their possession, fraudulent Social Security cards and IDs. We also mustn't forget that the way the terrorists obtained these cards was purchasing them through an illegal alien migrant laborer in Virginia.
 
I question our homeland security as the head of the Mexican Consular Affairs Department director, Roberto Rodriguez, is under indictment for selling United States visas to Middle-Easterners who were unable to enter our country due to heightened scrutiny. He also was the one held accountable for the sales of illicit visas in 2 other American-based consular offices 3 months ago. These offices are now closed down.
 
My final thought regarding the ever-present terrorist attacks is; be afraid. Be very afraid for yourselves and for your children in America. Because the reality is ladies and gentlemen, our country, our borders and our airports really are not secure at all.
 
Marty Lich, Eagle County Republican Party Precinct Chair, Gypsum, CO
 

 
Results of lawsuit speak for themselves - Summit Daily News, July 16, 2003
 
I got a big kick out of your July 14 story ("Summit County commissioner labels RRR lawsuit a nuisance") wherein Summit County Commissioner Gary ("The Spinmeister") Lindstrom labeled our successful lawsuit against the Rural Resort Region "a nuisance lawsuit," adding that the settlement won't affect Summit County.
 
The commissioner must have taken the same course that all lawyers seem to have taken: Deny-Deny-Deny 101.
 
Of course, if the lawsuit were the nuisance suit he described, the judge would have tossed it and assessed us the legal fees Summit County taxpayers ended up paying. Ergo, the lawsuit has already has affected Summit County.
 
And if Lindstrom, as part of another Rural Resort Region, wants to foolishly expose the taxpayers of Summit County to yet another reckless venture, we will be more than happy to pie the man again.
 
The results of our lawsuit speak for themselves.
 
Mike McGarry, Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform, Aspen
 

 
Tupa's apologia for IDs twisted, misinformed - Rocky Mountain News, July 11, 2003
 
Sen. Ron Tupa's twisted, misinformed apologia for the thoroughly discredited Mexican matricula card reveals more about Tupa, his loyalties and priorities, than it does the subject he wrote about ("Who Goes There?/Thinly veiled attack on Mexican immigrants impractical and actually more dangerous," July 5). The senator insists, with a seemingly straight face, that the sham matricula card is a valid form of ID, conveniently ignoring that the FBI and the Justice Department say the card is worthless junk, and accepting it as valid ID is dangerous.
 
Tupa never saw an illegal alien he wouldn't lay out a red carpet for while treating his own citizen constituents with disdain. Let's not forget it was Tupa who for two years now has introduced legislation to give Colorado driver's licenses to illegal aliens, never mind that poll after poll show overwhelmingly that the vast majority of those who make up "We the People" don't want accommodations made to those who broke into our country and commit multiple misdemeanors and felonies to perpetuate themselves here. They want them deported.
 
This is especially critical when you realize that every month now more than 80,000 illegal aliens from all over the world successfully break into our country.
 
If the duplicitous Tupa wants to shill for Mexico's El Presidente Fox and represent the citizens of Mexico (or any other country), he should move there and run for office. Either way, with his loyalties and priorities hopelessly and shamefully corrupted, Tupa should immediately resign from office.
 
Mike McGarry, Aspen, CO
 

 
CU to host natural hazards workshop - Colorado Daily, July 11, 2003
 
I note that CU Boulder's Natural Hazards Center will hold "the world's premier conference for hazards and disasters". Director Dennis Mileti, put a "period" on his description to emphasize its scope. But I'll bet that one natural disaster, that is also a government policy disaster, will not be discussed by the Undersecretaries, Directors, and agency heads in attendance. Immigration.
 
If you scanned down to the end of this letter and saw my name, you KNEW that I would speak of the "Big I", the "Unmentionable I" - Immigration. Living all my 66 years in the state with the most legal, illegal, and refugee immigrants, it's not hard for me to see a government-made disaster as our natural, physical, civic, and social infrastructures melt into a heap of dysfunctional goo.
 
Please follow this link to a picture from the California Poppy Preserve: www.avpress.com/av/nature/flowers/bsg1.hts.
 
When I was a girl, before our population had tripled, the fields I played in look just like this. My grandchildren have lost more than just this golden playground, they have lost the indescribably valuable internalized 'joy & awe' that can't be duplicated by an occasional visit to a preserve. As our immigration-driven population triples again in the next several decades, I can only imagine what else will be lost.
 
As disasters go, unrestrained immigration's effects aren't of the immediate magnitude of an earthquake, hurricane, or terrorist attack. The effects are far more subtle and wrapped in layers of politically touchy sentimentality. No one speaks of a hurricane as a part of our national heritage or intones "we are a nation of hurricanes", though both statements are partially true. But this natural phenomenon encased within government policies has a destructive potential if not used wisely. Please link to www.encounterbooks.com/books/mest/mest_preface.html and read the preface to MEXIFORNIA, by Victor D. Hanson. Perhaps you will agree with a recent Los Angeles Times reviewer: "MEXIFORNIA has a lyrical 'Our Town' quality" (www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la-bk-lynch6jul06§ion =/printstory).
 
Just as poets can evoke the essence of a hurricane, classics professor, Hanson distills the entire West's future and lays its care in the hands of each citizen.
 
Emerson's recipe for mental health was to "look each day upon something that man has not made or shaped." In your beautiful Colorado, I presume this is still true for you. But unless our population growth is stemmed, it will be less possible for your children and only a memory for their children. That would be a disaster!
 
Barbara Bickory, Escondido, CA
 

 
The new amnesty in disguise - Colorado Daily, July 7, 2003
 
Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) is introducing a guest worker/amnesty bill this month, something President Bush is supporting. This program demands public scrutiny as it will give amnesty to the estimated 8-11 million illegal aliens here, along with providing them with Social Security and Medicare accounts. Americans need to voice their opinions on either securing our borders totally, or opening them completely.
 
For the record, American citizens were promised a 'one time only' amnesty given to illegals residing here in 1986. Since then, we have had 6 amnesties approved without public notification. Our United States is now home to 33 million legal immigrants and illegal aliens. That is larger than the current population of Canada. Current fiscal cost, 68 billion relocation-adaptation dollars paid by U.S. taxpayers.
 
While our Statue of Liberty has always been a symbol of freedom and liberty, welcoming immigrants to America, it has never meant that nationals from other countries have the unconditional right to violate America's immigration laws. It remains illegal to enter sans visa into our country, federal code 8 U.S.C.1325, punishable under U.S. Code Title 18. Yet 8-11,000,000 illegal aliens remain in violation of our immigration laws. For information's sake, we do have a current agricultural guest-worker program, with NAWS (The National Agricultural Worker Survey) reporting that wage and benefits continue to drop, while the illegal workers increase at 3-4% a year. NAWS has tracked the workers since the late 1980's. Experience promotes the thought that it will be no different with the new proposed federal guest-worker program.
 
See http://www.cis.org/articles/2000/back400.html for information.
 
Unfortunately, corporate 'big money' talks in our country. FAIR stated it best: "Corporate interests reap the benefits of cheap labor." U.S. companies often exploit these people. These corporations know they do not have to pay fair wage, Workman's Compensation or provide health insurance when hiring illegal workers. Taxpayers currently fill in these costly gaps.
 
Are we to believe that these corporations will now pay Workman's Compensation, health coverage and their share of taxes for their workers if this amnesty bill passes? What will cause them to change when 800,000 new potential employees pour across our borders yearly, as evidenced by the Farm guest-worker program?
 
Colorado is also home to the largest increase (73.4 %) of immigrants in the nation. Each U.S. born 'anchor' baby is an American citizen, and under the 1965 immigration Act, facilitates citizenship for the immediate family and ultimately, the extended family. Tax-paid costs of educating illegal alien's children in Colorado, $5 Billion dollars last year. Colorado's Emergency Medicaid costs, approximately $30 million for about 6,000 illegal immigrant mothers. These births represent 40% of the births paid for by Colorado taxpayers. Our federal Emergency Medical Act mandates that hospitals with emergency-room services must treat everyone.
 
Uncompensated CO health care is jumping to approximently $252 million this year. How are we going to financially support these new immigrants, when we are cannot pay for Medicaid services, hospitals and teachers for our current Colorado residents now?
 
For information on immigration, see the following: http://www.numbersusa.com/, with access to your Congressmen, and legislators, and http://www.cis.org/ (Center for Immigration Studies, Washington, D.C.)
 
American citizens need to voice our opinions one way or the other. Support opening our borders completely, or demand we secure them totally.
 
Whatever our actions are, there will be lifestyle reactions... one way or another.
 
Marty Lich, Gypsum, CO
 

 
Overpopulation is what I'm against - not immigration - Colorado Daily, July 4, 2003
 
After working on a new project in the Alaskan wilds, I found an internet cafe where I discovered detractors in the Colorado Daily making remarks against my stand for upholding immigration laws in America. What those detractors don't understand is that they lack the knowledge that I possess. They argue through ignorance and not through facts, through emotions, not reality.
 
Our country is in deep trouble. My stance is not against immigration, but it is against overpopulation driven by immigration. We can't keep taking on millions of people from countries that refuse to practice family planning. We can't keep taking on sheer numbers that have no end until we end up like Bangladesh, China or India. We can't sustain another 200 million people in this country at this standard of living.
 
Everything we take for granted will not be there for our children. In Colorado, with 4 million more people by 2050, we won't have enough water. We won't have fresh air. We won't have wild spaces. We'll cause even more species extinction. We're accelerating deadly global warming. Overpopulation will become the 'Plague of the 21st Century'.
 
And, it will happen because people who don't know what they are talking about will keep doing nothing or they will encourage more and more immigration until we are a nation with unsolvable problems.
 
My heroes are Dr. Martin Luther King, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Jefferson, Eleanor Roosevelt and others. They knew more than the general populace long before the average citizen. Their 'truths' are self evident today.
 
I'll guarantee you with another 200 million people in America, it's going to be a quagmire of misery for our children. We won't be able to solve the problems. I ask my detractors to take a two week vacation in Bangladesh where 130 million people live in a landmass the size of Colorado. If you think that's a great way to live, be my guest and move over there. If not, you better start thinking of ways to stop that from happening in America.
 
Yes, my passion for America, this democracy, our standard of living and our quality of life is worth my time and effort. To do less would be an abdication of my responsibilities as a citizen. I have seen what is coming and it's not going to be pretty.
 
If you care about America and the future, act locally at www.cairco.org or nationally, www.nunmbersusa.com. California is already a cesspool of problems. Arizona is deep in water trouble and sprawl along with species extinctions, air pollution and worse. The East Coast is swimming in 7,000 new cases of leprosy and we have 16,000 new cases of MDR tuberculosis which is incurable and spreading fast via illegal immigrants working in fast food restaurants. It won't be so funny if you are infected or your children with diseases such as Chagas, hepatitis or worse.
 
This August, I'll return to Colorado and the national radio and TV circuit where I will do my 'Paul Revere' ride to warn America. You better believe that I am an American patriot and I will bring the message with passion and power. Since the national leadership such as Udall, DeGette, Bill Owens, Campbell and Allard are oblivious to this crisis, it's up to average citizens to take the lead. I will do my part.
 
In the meantime, I'm out in the woods hunting grizzlies, moose, Big horned sheep, bald eagles and caribou with my camera. My 'shots' will be 'seen' around the world and my words will be read until they are understood. Ignorance and emotions will be no excuse for my detractors.
 
Frosty Wooldridge, The Yukon Territory (on vacation via e-mail)
 

 
Illegal aliens cost nation more than they pay - The Gazette (Colorado Springs), July 2, 2003
 
This is in response to the letter from Richard Trujillo, "Workers fill a niche in our economy", in the June 26 Gazette.
 
There are between 9 million and 11 million illegal aliens in the United States. They are neither law-abiding nor citizens - indeed, their very first act in coming here was to violate the laws of our land.
 
Would many companies go under if these illegal aliens were deported? Hardly. Eighteen million unemployed U.S. citizens could and would do the jobs illegal aliens are doing, if paid a living wage. Teenagers and college students would again be able to find entry-level manual labor jobs.
 
Were Americans to be hired instead of illegals, companies would simply increase the price of goods by a small percentage to make up the difference in their cost of doing business. Contrary to what open-borders advocates would have you believe, corporate interests and business owners benefit from employing illegals, not our economy and certainly not the average citizen. The money companies save in payroll taxes, workers compensation, unemployment compensation and health care costs goes to their bottom line; the profits they realize line their pockets, not the consumers.
 
Some may say illegals pay their share of taxes. The IRS reported that illegal aliens in the U.S. paid $300 million in taxes last year. California alone is looking to the federal government (the taxpayers) to reimburse it $2.5 billion for the costs of illegal aliens. Hospitals and clinics are going bankrupt and closing all along the Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California borders.
 
The bottom line is that illegal aliens are breaking our laws, depressing wages, are a drain on our economy and are destroying our infrastructure. One need only look at California to see the future in store for Colorado.
 
Fred Elbel
Director, Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform, Lakewood
 

 
There is an answer - Rocky Mountain News, June 25, 2003 In the June 20 article, 'Colorado's population expected to surpass 7 million by 2030,' no solutions were offered. But reductions in growth can be accomplished. How? Start at the federal level. Congress should restore the legal immigration growth to the pre-1965 level of 178,000 or eliminate it totally for a few years. In addition, arrangements should be made to close the borders to illegal immigration.
 
Robert L. Wiswell, Denver
 

 
Enforcing the Law - Illegal aliens are breaking the law by being here - The Gazette (Colorado Springs), June 19, 2003
 
I read with interest the article in the June 19 Gazette regarding police wanting to hear from Hispanics ("Police want to hear from Hispanics"). I find it quite unsettling that our local law enforcement officials choose to blatantly defy federal law.
 
The Federal Immigration and Nationality Act makes it "illegal for any person, regardless of their affiliation, to encourage or induce an alien to reside knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such residence is in violation of law." While police in the United States may not have the power to deport illegal aliens, they do have the power to detain and hold them for federal authorities. Many people are confused about the legal authority of local law enforcement over immigration violations, but they shouldn't be. States, as sovereign entities, possess the authority to enforce federal immigration laws, civil and criminal.
 
Our local law enforcement is the front line in protecting our cities, states and nation from invasion or terrorism. Yet our local law enforcement chooses to disregard the commission of one crime (illegal entry to the United States) in order to prosecute another crime. Local law enforcement’s decision to ignore the crime illegal aliens are committing extends a prejudiced and discriminatory protection and different requirements to illegal aliens over and above legal United States citizens. This, at the very least, is questionable under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
 
While I don't condone crimes being committed against illegal aliens, I don't believe they should be exempted and protected from prosecution of the laws they are breaking.
 
Cathy Welch, Colorado Springs
 

 
Legals are welcome - Rocky Mountain News, June 19, 2003
 
In her column of June 3, "Children of illegals need opportunity for higher ed," Maria Elena Salinas expresses confidence that "many immigrant-bashers out there are jumping out of their chairs with disgust at the thought of having immigrants with no legal status aspiring to enter American colleges and universities." What unmitigated hogwash! We Americans who want our nation's borders protected against illegal entries are not "immigrant-bashers." To remain a strong and united America we must allow only legal immigrants into our nation, and only enough of them to meet our national needs, and not the individual needs of unscrupulous American employers anxious to make a fast buck, the national welfare be damned.
 
Charles L. King, Boulder
 

 
Cyrus's reply didn't hit the facts - Colorado Daily, June 19, 2003
 
Grant Cyrus' ranting manifesto of ignorance was devoid of a single fact concerning immigration but was certainly full of shallow personal insults directed at Frosty Wooldridge.
 
Cyrus states that "America, like England belongs to the world now" and that New York is not an American City as it belongs to Paris, London, Rio and just about all of Jamaica." Really? Tell me, does New York belong to the 19 immigrant hijackers who destroyed the World Trade Center and killed thousands of Americans? Does America also belong to Syria or Iran or Saudi Arabia, whose citizens hate us and routinely call for death to all of us American "infidels?"
 
How about criminal aliens? In 1980, our federal and state prisons housed fewer than 9,000 criminal aliens. By the end of 1999, these same prisons housed over 68,000 criminal aliens. Today, criminal aliens account for over 54 percent of federal prison inmates and represent the fastest growing segment of the federal prison population. Does America belong to these dirtbags?
 
Maybe it belongs to the 1 million legal immigrants and illegal aliens that come into the U.S. annually who depress wages for American workers and add to our unemployment problem. Currently, 18 million American citizens cannot find full-time employment, and these unemployed are disproportionately black and Hispanic. Don't Americans deserve jobs Cyrus?
 
If America belongs to the world now, maybe the world will help us pay all the costs imposed upon us by immigration. A recent study by the National Research Council shows the "net current fiscal burden (taxes paid minus services used) imposed on all levels of government by immigrants nationally, is estimated to range from $11.4 Billion to $20.2 Billion annually. This fiscal drain is larger than the $1 billion to $10 billion originally estimated from having immigrants in the labor market."
 
Cyrus berates Wooldridge as a "frightened, anti-immigrant one man show." Hardly. Woodridge's position is, in fact, representative of the majority of Americans. A Harris-Roper Poll conducted last fall found that 76 percent of Americans favor reductions in legal immigration from the current level of about 1million per year. The poll also found 85 percent of those surveyed feel that illegal immigration is a "serious problem."
 
Perhaps in Cyrus' happy little fantasy place, the U.S. can leave its doors open to the billions of people who would love to come here. But the rest of us who live in the real world understand that such an arrangement would only turn the U.S. into another third-world cesspool of the same sort the world's masses are trying to flee.
 
Phil Brink, Erie
 

 
Response to editorial "Tancredo limps again onto the world stage" - Aurora Sentinal, June 11, 2003
 
In regards to your May 28 editorial, "Tancredo limps again onto the world stage," I find it unconscionable that the Sentinel would publicly espouse breaking the laws of our nation, saying, "But we still believe that our national economy depends on illegal immigrant workers. ..."
 
It's clear that Colorado disagrees with you, having passed last month a law banning the acceptance of the phony, non-secure Mexican matricula consular ID card. It's clear that the vast majority of Americans and Coloradans, in poll after poll, want illegal migration halted and legal immigration vastly curtailed.
 
Rep. Tom Tancredo is right on when he expresses concern about the 18 million Americans who can't find a full-time job. Bringing in more illegal aliens on top of the 9 million to 11 million illegal aliens already in this country is not going to help America. I commend Tancredo in supporting the rule of law and enforcement of our borders.
 
Fred Elbel
Director, Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform (CAIR)
 

 
Health-care crisis ignores biggest cause - Rocky Mountain News, June 12, 2003
 
It's amazing how article after newspaper article can go on about the crises with uninsured hospital care while never mentioning its single greatest cause: unrelentless mass immigration. Articles and TV news reports about hospital and emergency room closings in high immigration, border states - and now, like a cancer, migrating into the interior of the country - are everywhere, but no mention of the I-word.
 
The News' commentary of June 7, "Crisis in emERgency," is no exception.
 
The U.S. now takes on a gargantuan 80,000 illegal aliens a month, many of whom are headed right to our hospitals. They come expecting us to pay for their irresponsible childbirths. Or, as in Washington state, to get treatments for everything from headaches and depression to major surgery and all paid for by Medicaid. Or, as in Florida, where an illegal alien has now run up a bill for more than $1 million and still counting.
 
In addition, we are now adding more than a million "legal" immigrants annually, more than any period in our history and approximately five times our historical average. The nonpartisan Center for Immigration Studies reports that 60 percent of the more recent additions making up the 44 million uninsured in the country are immigrants and their children.
 
The nation's (and the state's) health-care system is imploding because of a terminal case of mass denial about mass immigration to which the News just significantly contributed.
 
Linda Lou Roy, Aspen
 

 
I support Tom Tancredo and his stance on illegal immigration - I am also Hispanic - Aurora Sentinal, June 11, 2003
 
I support Tom Tancredo and his stance on illegal immigration - I am also Hispanic.
 
People have created a world of lies about the "poor illegal." On most construction jobs they are paid very well. They don't really pay taxes because employers encourage them to put down at least eight exemptions.
 
So, how much money is really taken out of their checks? They falsify every document they can, with help from companies who do taxes, sell real estate, do mortgages, and sell them cars.
 
These are the people who clean your offices late at night and have access to every document that has someone's social security number on it. Your insurance companies, mortgage companies, banks, and schools records are all very vulnerable.
 
We don't really need to be concerned with the Mexican ID card because they can falsify paper work and get help from people working in the Department of Motor Vehicle's to obtain a license. I wonder who is going to file the first lawsuit against a bank for making U.S. citizens credit qualify to open an account but if your illegal -the rules are different-you don't have to credit qualify.
 
The Mexicans teach their children values, but what are they? We have a whole generation of children believing that lying is a way of life. Women come here just to have their kids and go back home with the birth certificate that says her child was born in the U.S. All of those kids will grow up and make demands of the U.S. This is like a virus with no cure.
 
Diana Maldonado Bell
 

 
Your anti-Tancredo band wagon - Aurora Sentinal, June 11, 2003
 
I'm upset you would assume that your readers would jump on your anti-Tancredo band wagon. The last sentence of your May 28 editorial is probably the worst..." and the rest of the country that embraces them," referring to illegal aliens.
 
I'm angered that you are not bothered by the fact that millions of loyal, Red White & Blue waving Americans are unemployed, while millions of illegal, law-breaking, un-patriotic aliens cross our borders every day to steal jobs. Also, we do not depend at all, on illegal alien labor. As a matter of fact, if I or may family need to eat and pay the bills, I'd work any job to make it happen, even the jobs your type say Americans won't do.
 
The problem is, those jobs aren't available because of the out-of-control immigration and illegal alien problem. We must stand up for what's best for our country, and leaving the back door wide open isn't it. I applaud Tancredo for his courage to stand up against the few like yourself, and represent what opinion polls show to be, the feelings of most Americans.
 
Ken Estes, Aurora
 

 
Bravo to Tom Tancredo - Aurora Sentinal, June 11, 2003
 
Bravo to Tom Tancredo for having the courage and conviction to stand up and identify a major ill within our nation: illegal immigration.
 
While you may not share his moral and ethical compass, it is difficult to believe that America is better off with millions of uneducated and unskilled scofflaws because they will work for less money than America's poorest residents. The "black community" has been devastated by these people, from losing their jobs, housing, schools and health care system.
 
Whoring for cheap labor has come back to haunt Los Angeles, is what you envision for Colorado?
 
When was the last time you did a piece on the corrupt and dysfunctional Mexican government, the root of this problem? Journalism sure has tanked. Shame on you.
 
Tom Wright, Aurora
 

 
Mark Udall's Illegal Immigration Connection - Colorado Daily, week of June 8, 2003
 
In the past 15 years, our nation has been invaded by 9 million illegal aliens. They've broken into our country and remain here because our presidents and congress have shirked their sworn duty to enforce our immigration laws. Despite 9/11, elected officials continue ignoring laws enacted to protect our sovereignty.
 
Today, mass immigration and open borders threaten every aspect of American society--from jobs to housing, from sprawl to staggering debt, from language confusion to a collapsing medical care system. Once unthinkable practices such as clitorectomies, 'honor' killings are becoming common place in America. SARS, TB, Chagas, hepatitis, new strains of AIDS enter with unscreened illegal aliens—creating horrific health hazards for our citizens.
 
A case in point: US Representative Mark Udall (D-Boulder) met with illegal aliens—Diego, Alvaro, Eduardo and Modesto last month, saying, "They were Americans through and through." (Boulder Weekly, 5/15/03). No, Mr. Udall, the are not Americans. They are foreign nationals whose very first act on our soil was to enter unlawfully. Why would our 'Representative' meet with individuals who are in the USA illegally and not report their presence and secure deportation? After calling his office with no response from him, I conclude that Udall feels no need to answer this citizen's concerns. Therefore, I will share them with in the public forum:
 
The immigration and naturalization Act, Section 8, USC 1324 states: "Any person who encourages or induces an alien to reside in the USA knowingly or in reckless disregard for the fact that such... residence is in violation of law, shall be punished as provided…for each alien in respect to whom a violation occurs... fined under title 18... imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both."
 
For example: Udall is co-sponsoring House Bill 1918 that would extend lower in-state college tuition rates to these illegal aliens at a time when the University of Colorado is going broke. Udall asserts that HR 1918 is "the right thing to do." What, to use our taxes to pay for illegal foreigners in our country? Wasn't 9/11 enough of a wake-up call for Congress to FINALLY represent and serve American citizens’ interest an not illegal aliens?
 
Udall's personal help of foreigners includes voting for an increase of the H1B visas which has given 890,000 American jobs to foreigners. He's stood silent as Mexican cartels operate $150 million dollar drug plantations in Sequoia National Park. He did nothing before or after the INS let John Malvo loose to kill 17 Americans. He has stood silent regarding the killing of US Forest Ranger Kris Eggle by Mexicans on our southern border.
 
Udall needs to understand that the highest position an American can hold in our nation is that of 'CITIZEN'. He is elected and paid to work for us not illegal aliens. By ignoring us and meeting with them, he fails in his oath of office to 'serve the United States'. Americans will not, must not, tolerate leaders who knowingly break our laws, by encouraging and inducing illegal aliens to reside in the USA at great cost to Americans.
 
Frosty Wooldridge
 

 
What is happening to America? - Colorado Daily, June 4, 2003
 
In tomorrow's America of suffocating political correctness and clashing cultures, unrestricted immigration will prove a merciless weapon of war. It's importing conflicting languages, barbaric rituals such as female genital mutilation, deadly diseases like tuberculosis and leprosy, cultural antagonisms and loss of a cohesive national identity. California is our national harbinger of things to come.
 
The Roman Empire fell to immigration of the Vandals. Likewise, Celtic Britain, Germany's Prussia and Serbian Kosovo.
 
I traveled to Los Angeles last week. I felt like a stranger in my own country as few spoke English. Whole areas have been turned into city-states of foreigners where Americans are not welcome. I might as well have been in China, Korea, Mexico or Bangladesh. All businesses carried their own languages. One store, Aztlan Gallery, featured anti American T-shirts, 'DECOLONIZE: UNITED STATES OF AZTLAN' and 'GO BACK HOME GRINGOS'.
 
What is happening to America? Where once immigration furnished men and women for building a nation, today, illegal and unrestricted mass immigration make a few wealthy at the expense of American citizens. Our own corporations are 'outsourcing' jobs to Third World countries--thus leaving American citizens in unemployment lines. Honored names like Hormel, that were built by Americans, bus illegals from Texas into food processing plants in Austin, Minnesota. Along with their cheap labor come drugs, TB, Leprosy and killings. Austin's schools struggle with a dozen foreign languages and Austin kids suffer. Our own congress renewed the H1B visa which gave 890,000 American jobs in the past 10 years to foreigners. Little wonder our enconomy augured into the ground like a plane that lost its wings.
 
In Sequoia National Park, Mexican cartels run a $150 million dollar drug growing plantation with armed guards who threaten backpackers. In Florida, a Muslim woman is suing our country so she can disobey our laws because she refuses to have her picture taken for a drivers license. A naturalized citizen Muslim soldier in US Army uniform fragged and killed his commanders two months ago in Iraq. We have over 30,000 men in Army uniform who aren't American citizens. Last fall, the INS freed illegal alien John Malvo who promptly killed 17 Americans.
 
Via illegal immigration of 9 to 13 million, we have 16,000 new cases of tuberculosis and 7,000 new cases of leprosy in the past three years. We suffer a $6.4 trillion national debt and 6.1% national unemployment, but we spend $68 billion resettling 2.3 million immigrants each year when our own citizens can't find a job. Immigrants send $33.5 billion of our dollars back to their home countries--thus draining us of hard currency. This transfer of wealth is making this country poorer by the day.
 
Do we need rituals where a baby girl has her sexual being cut out of her in the form of a 'clitorectomy'? Do we condone by being politially correct 'cockfighting' brought to us by certain cultures which then spread New Castle Disease to our own chicken flocks? What about the new strain of tuberculosis spreading across America because illegal immigrants work in fast food and hotels. It's called MDR TB and has no cure.
 
American citizens are dying in emergency rooms because hospitals are over run with immigrants who can't pay. Fast food joints hire illegals carrying hepatitis because they aren't health screened--thus spreading their diseases to our citizens. Because of no family planning in their countries of origin, this endless line of immigrants is pushing us toward 200 million added people vying for diminishing resources past the mid century. For starters, how about a glass of water in the drought prone West?
 
This is not about race, creed or color. It’s about too many people and an unsustainable society in the long term. Can America continue as a vent pipe for countries that refuse family planning? The most serious consequence by far, to our posterity and us, is found in the requirements inherent in our form of government. Democracy requires an educated populace with a similar moral and ethical foundation—speaking the same language. As immigration’s numbers spiral to unmanageable numbers, we are losing the cultural cohesion essential to a healthy democracy.
 
Our country stands at a critical juncture. We, as a nation, either decide our citizens and way of life are worth maintaining or we will spiral into the quagmire described by Teddy Roosevelt-- "a tangle of squabbling nationalities." In his time, he never considered accelerating overpopulation—a present day dilemma exacerbated by immigration. If you don't think we're in trouble, you haven't been paying attention.
 
Frosty Wooldridge
 

 
Getting a job is not a problem - for illegals - Rocky Mountain News, June 4, 2003
 
The May 31 Wall Street West section of the News indicates several million Coloradans are unemployed. An article in the previous day's Business section states that jobless workers are facing the longest search in 20 years with some of the hardest hit being those of college age and teenagers. Searches can last more than two years.
 
These numbers lead one to ask why there are several hundred thousand illegals employed in Colorado and why they have jobs that should be going to Americans. It is clear that illegals are taking jobs away from Americans across the country. With over 80,000 illegals crossing the border every month, it's a genuine shame that they are not crossing the border in the other direction.
 
Are our supposed government leaders still chanting the party line, "They are just taking the jobs Americans do not want"? I don't think so. Drive past a housing site sometime. Meat packing, once a good job, is now performed by illegals. Fast-food outlets must have one English interpreter or Americans will not purchase their Big Macs.
 
It seems Americans must take whatever is left in the job market, higher education be damned. It will be very difficult to convince even the most dedicated of party hacks that illegal immigration is good for this country with unemployment numbers on the rise. Other than Rep. Tom Tancredo, do we really have any representation in Washington, D.C.?
 
Michael Brown, Morrison
 

 
Root of water woes: Too many people - Rocky Mountain News, June 2, 2003
 
I am getting sick of all the short-term plans to address our water problems. I have yet to see a politician or media source get to the root of our ills: Too many people.
 
What happens when Colorado takes in another million people? Does anyone not understand that they will soon multiply? It is time to do something about it for the sake of future generations. Limit your family size. Tax breaks should be given for fewer children, not more. If you want a large family, adopt!
 
Legal immigration must be slowed and illegal immigration stopped. We also need to support worldwide family planning. Experts predict that in only 13 years there will be a world population of 7 billion unless there is a tremendous effort to slow birthrates.
 
Postponing action can no longer be an option.
 
Barbara Hanson
 

 
Free to scheme - Boulder Weekly, May 29, 2003
 
Pamela White's puff piece on open borders, "Free to Dream," is a prime example of the junk journalism surrounding the globalist-elitist agenda to turn America into a third world tribal mess, where the middle class is taxed into extinction to support illegal aliens (cover story, May 15). Better termed the "Free to Scheme Scam," the proposal to reward illegals with in-state college tuition rates is just another tax grab from cash-strapped citizens.
 
El Centro Amistad's Laurie Herndon may as well have submitted a press release filled with her typically vapid, emotional drivelese, quoted shamelessly here by the self-loathing American White: "undocumented [students] and parents...are wonderful people." Herndon blathers about why citizens should surrender our precious nation and dwindling dollars to these aliens, and as usual, her points are pointless.
 
White's contortionist garbly-gook tags ILLEGAL ALIEN STUDENTS as "sons and daughter of immigrants who entered the United States without documentation." Does White actually believe that illegals deserve even more millions of dollars of public services, all at citizens' expense? Why?
 
White and Herndon forget to mention that each of these burdensome border-jumpers has already cost taxpayers at least $100,000 for K-12 education. (Don't even try to claim unskilled illegal laborers pay a fraction of that in taxes!) Few Americans know that most immigrant students are funded at far higher levels than their citizen counterparts due to an "at risk" status.
 
Has White missed the fact that public school coffers­even in Boulder­ have been drained by immigrants under idiotic outcome-based education (OBE) standards that drag citizen children down to the lowest common denominator? While money is literally hosed at low-performing immigrants­many illegal and not wanted here, according to poll after poll­American kids get paltry educational leftovers. Herndon's harp that American parents should sacrifice our children's futures, justified by her revised white man's burden rationale, is downright nuts. Nuts.
 
Check out immigrant-laden California, which once had the finest public education system in the nation. Today, California educators resort to comparisons with American Samoa to avoid placing dead last in student academic performance scores. Coming to Colorado... soon!
 
Traitor trash politicians such as Mark Udall, D-Boulder, serve tripe for truth in White's propaganda piece by asserting that forcing citizens to reward illegal aliens with in-state tuition rates "is the right thing to do" and "an example of enlightened self interest." Udall must understand that taxation without representation resulted in something called the Revolutionary War a few years back. Does violating his oath of office to protect the health, safety and welfare of citizens and uphold our Constitution, and instead taking our money for illegal aliens, mean nothing to our so-called "representative"? Udall's meeting with illegal aliens, reported here, should have resulted in his turning over these illegals to the INS for deportation. Instead, he harbors, shelters, aids and abets, breaking various federal laws.
 
Incredibly, State Board of Education vice chair Jared Polis opines that ILLEGAL alien students are "law-abiding" and "de facto citizens." If Polis is so unclear on the concepts of NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY, CITIZENSHIP and LAWS, he needs to go back to school.
 
Truly, the comparatively small cost of rounding up and deporting illegal aliens is the "enlightened" policy that would serve the "self-interest" of citizens, and save the public education system many of our ancestors spent generations building. Rewarding illegal alien students for their parentss illegal entry into the United States is an insult to citizens and as bass-ackwards as giving a bank robberss child the hoist and more for their parentss criminal activities. Let these children look to their parents­not Americans­as the cause of their illegal status and deportation.
 
The globalist agenda pushed by the likes of xenophiliac Herndon, impostor Udall, ignoramus Polis and oilman Bush will spell the death of America and its ruling citizens as we know it. And, as shut up words such as "racist," "xenophobe," "nativist," along with the guilt-tripping vilification of white Anglo Saxons lose their punch, open-borders politicians, junk journalists and third-rate publicists for banana republics should not be surprised when citizens choose which laws we follow in response.
 
Terry Graham, Boulder
 

 
Like a stealth creature - Colorado Daily, May 20, 2003
 
Like a stealth creature, unrestricted immigration is the most formidable weapon of mass destruction threatening America today. Saddam was a pussycat. Even more sobering is the irony of invaders defeating us without firing a shot. Most Americans busy themselves with a remote and the pizza delivery boy while an average of 2,100 illegal aliens pour over our borders every day, seven days a week, 9 million to date and another 9 arriving in time. Another 4,100 legal immigrants arrive daily while we pay their resettlement costs. How much? Try 68 billion of your tax dollars a year.
 
As our congress and president invite in another 195,000 H 1B visa workers per year, our ousted workers hit the bricks in search of a job. Those immigrants both legal and illegal bring disease and rituals like female genital mutilation, rooster fighting and other deadly consequences. TB cases doubled in Colorado last year.
 
The White House and Congress lack the collective intellectual depth or common sense to see what is upon us and how rampant immigration will adversely affect the lives of our progeny as we add another 200 million people. Every day brings America closer to irreversible chaos. If only the captain of the Titanic had kept his eyes open. He didn't and Bush shows the same tendencies of hubris, arrogance and stupidity. Too many people, too few solutions will bring this country to its knees and our children with it. As an American citizen, you must act before you no longer have a chance to act. Locally: www.cairco.org Nationally: www.numbersusa.com Get involved in your country and your future.
 
Frosty Wooldridge
 

 
U.S. health care becoming swamped - Boulder Camera, April 27, 2003
 
I am continually amazed that illegal Mexican immigrants refuse to learn our language and demand that we adapt to them (re: "Language barrier," front page, April 20).
 
The majority of legal ethnic immigrants to the United States, for decades and even today, has learned to speak/read English, at least to the degree they could function and contribute within our system. Are we supposed to print all of our signs, laws, menus, maps, newspapers in Mexican, Farsi, Russian, Chinese, etc.? Are we supposed to provide police who speak all of these languages? Maybe our armed forces should be made up of troops that can't understand each other as well. This is like Americans illegally immigrating to Russia and demanding that all forms of Russian communication be provided in English so that they would not have to adapt to them and learn Russian.
 
And on another point the article made, that U.S. "emergency rooms are required by law to serve everybody who walks in their doors." Mexico now routinely sends sick Mexicans who have no prospect of paying their Mexican medical bills to the United States, via back roads across the border if necessary, and drops them off at U.S. emergency rooms. This problem has grown to a $200 million expense to U.S. border hospitals, and U.S. representatives of those states are now in the process of passing that bill onto the U.S. taxpayers, as if the U.S. budget is currently awash with unspent cash.
 
Perhaps in the future, the Daily Camera can delve into the broader problems of illegal immigrants, not just the "horrible" inconveniences they experience while in the United States — illegally.
 
STEVE MATHESON, Boulder
 

 
Illegal immigrants do receive government benefits - Glenwood Springs Post Independent, April 18, 2003
 
This is in response to Mr. Munoz’s letter, "Remember our immigrant roots."
 
Yes, we have many immigrants from other nations. They come (and came) here dirt poor, accept no taxpayer benefits, and with a great desire to make something of themselves. They hold education for their children in the highest regard.
 
Ms. Fix targeted Mexican illegals because 600,000 of them cross illegally here each year and that is what we see the most of here, illegally. They are our greatest number of people breaking the federal immigration law, while receiving public paid aid dollars.
 
Mr. Munoz, the tax cost in dollars for illegals is enormous. Actual figures are $29 billion paid by taxpayers for illegals only in the year 2000. For legal immigrants, $31 billion was paid out in 2000. These are facts from the U.S. Census Bureau, available to the public.
 
You need to do your homework sir, before making such an erroneous statement of, "illegals do not receive benefits, she needs to do a little research before she starts making these claims."
 
Mr. Munoz is also correct in his statement that the Southwest was colonized by Mexicans, but he forgot to add that it was stolen by the Mexicans after they murdered the Spanish and took it over! The United States then purchased the Southwest from Mexico.
 
MARTY LICH, Gypsum, CO
 

 
Frosty's right - Colorado Daily, April 11, 2003
 
In a recent letter, british immigrant Timothy Morton seems to think that the only issue with excess immigration is whether they pay taxes or not. Far from it. The real issues are more like excess population growth and the taking of jobs when Americans are out of work.
 
I notice you came here on an H1-B visa. These visas allow entry of hundreds of thousands of high-tech workers at a time when many citizen high-tech workers are hurting for work. Also, these visas are supposed to be TEMPORARY not PERMANENT as you and thousands of others seem to assume.
 
Entire industries are now becoming immigrant dominated. Take a look at a typical construction site. You will find largely mexicans there, taking jobs that were formerly well-paid and staffed by citizens, who now are probably collecting unemployment.
 
Other industries that have suffered are engineering, lawn care and office cleaning. Timothy, you made a big point that you pay taxes, but I wonder if you have ever considered the American worker you have displaced, and who now does NOT pay taxes.
 
Clearly, our government cares more about immigrants than it does it's own citizens. Frosty Wooldridge is correct.
 
Bob Waber, Boulder
 

 
Re: "Labor brokers cut costs, corners" - The Denver Post, April 18, 2003
 
Re: "Labor brokers cut costs, corners; Fast-growing firms exploit immigrants to feed construction industry," Feb. 16 news story.
 
The Denver Post is to be commended on the thorough investigative piece about illegal alien workers in the construction industry. But it's not just the foreign laborers who are hurt. Every construction job done by an exploited illegal alien is one not filled by an honest tax-paying American who is probably underemployed and would be paying a family's home mortgage and providing savings for college. With more than 8 million Americans unemployed in a tough economy, employment of illegal aliens is morally reprehensible.
 
The savings on labor costs by corrupt builders translates into higher taxes from the citizen's pocket. As The Post noted, these checks have no deductions taken out for workers' compensation or taxes, so there's no contribution to services aliens use in higher percentages, including health care, food stamps and subsidized housing.
 
Furthermore, legislators seem unwilling to understand the illegal immigration component to the drop in tax revenues. In Los Angeles County, up to 28 percent of the work force is paid in cash, meaning as many as one in four don't have federal and state payroll taxes withheld.
 
The larger damage to society runs deep. The blue-collar middle class is being gutted because government officials have succumbed to business interests wanting an endless supply of inexpensive workers.
 
BRENDA WALKER, Project Director www.ImmigrationsHumanCost.org, Berkeley, Calif.
 

 
Re: How our elected representatives work against us - By Frosty Wooldridge, Colorado Daily, April 1, 2003
 
Last year, as our economy tanked, we Colorado citizens took for granted that our senators Campbell, Allard and congress persons Degette and Udall as well as Owens were working to better our lives.
 
Instead, they worked under the radar screen to undermine us. For unemployed high tech workers, thank the aforementioned for adding another 80,000 H1 B visas for a grand total of 195,000 jobs annually given away to foreigners. It's called "internal outsourcing." The foreigner pays no Social Security or taxes while his children go to our schools at our expense. We're left looking for a job.
 
Each year, our elected officials grant 50,000 Diversity visas to the poorest, most illiterate people from countries in Africa, China and Bangladesh. These people create horrific health care, education and welfare expenses/consequences. In the last ten years, this visas has given us 500,000 people added to our welfare roles.
 
Chain migration visas allow one legal foreign national immigrant to bring in 100 of his relatives. This visas adds millions of uneducated, unskilled people into our country annually.
 
In excess 350,000 illegal pregnant women cross into America each year and birth their 'anchor babies'. They enjoy welfare afforded them by our congressional representatives. You and I pay.
 
It's called the 'Illegal Alien Visa' and is supported by Owens, Campbell, Udall and Degette, but not Congressman Tancredo. It has brought 9 million illegals into America and over 150,000 into Colorado. Their endless numbers bring our schools diseases
 
like TB/leprosy/Chagas, multiple languages and crowding. The cost? We pay 68 billion per year for these unrestricted immigrants coming into our country.
 
Since 1965, our congress has inundated our country with 1.5 million legal immigrants annually for a total of 84 million. Their numbers are doing untold damage to our country as THE driving force of overpopulation. It's going to get worse unless you stand up for your country. Act locally www.cairco.org and nationally at www.numbersusa.com.
 

 
What immigration reform has to do with homeland security - Glenwood Springs Post Independent, March 31, 2003
 
Let me begin by stating two things. One, I am pro legal immigration. Two, I am pro immigration reform, as I would like my children and other children to grow up in our free and wonderful country with all the opportunities we, as adults, have now.
 
Now, a true story on what why I worry about our homeland security, and what uncontrolled immigration is allowing to happen here.
 
Once upon a time, there were two men by the names of Hani Hanjour and Khalid Almihdhar. They needed IDs to be in this country legally. They approached three “undocumented workers, who were hanging around a small store in Virginia looking for work. They asked the first two to help them obtain fraudulent State IDs. The pair refused. The third man, Luis Martinez-Flores, said 'okay, for $100'. They obtained their fraudulent photo IDs, and had Mr. Martinez-Flores sign Virginia papers stating they were his roommates at a false address and working here.
 
Bingo, presto, poof! In 24 hours, they were legitimate Virginia residents! They then stayed in the U.S. undetected until one day, Sept. 11, 2001, they boarded a commercial plane ... and I think everyone in the U.S. knows how the story ends.
 
The man who helped them, Mr Martinez-Flores, should have been arrested a long time ago for being here illegally AND falsifying State ID information.
 
If that had happened, there would have been no 'True Story' to me to tell, and for Americans to have watched televised live on Sept. 11, 2001.
 
We need to open our eyes now, ladies and gentlemen. This is not going to go away if we continue to bury our heads in the sand.
 
For more information, look at www.numbersusa.com. or in Colorado, www.cairco.org. You will learn a lot. I know I did. Sincerely, Marty Lich Gypsum
 
MARTY LICH, Gypsum, CO
 

 
Coffman's departure from rally offensive - Rocky Mountain News, March 27, 2003
 
I am extremely offended by State Treasurer Mike Coffman's immature actions against Rep. Tom Tancredo ("Coffman left rally to protest Tancredo," March 27).
 
Tancredo is America's hero and he has the support of Americans. He is one of the only few honest and brave politicians who have the courage and integrity to stand up and fight for Americans' rights. He takes a stand against illegal immigration and has America's best interest at heart.
 
I feel that Coffman's embarrassing actions were just a failed attempt at a nasty smear campaign.
 
We all see right through his transparent tactics.
 
That doesn't change the way Americans feel about Tancredo but it does make Coffman look like a complete fool.
 
Does Coffman feel that Americans who have never served in the military lack the "moral authority" to have opinions, for and against the war, or other topics? Has he heard of the First Amendment? Has Coffman told President Bush that his lack of military service in combat means the president cannot send our troops to war?
 
I am so proud to be in Tom Tancredo's 6th Congressional District. I feel so honored to have him representing me and to represent Americans.
 
Lindy Ashner, Elizabeth
 

 
Not learning English is perilous for illegals - Rocky Mountain News, March 26, 2003
 
I just heard a piece on TV that more Mexican people living in the United States and working construction jobs are either injured or killed on the job than any other ethnic group. The reason given was communication. Most of these people (illegal immigrants) could neither speak nor understand English. Call me naive, but I believe the language spoken in the United States is still English. What are these people doing working and living here if they can't speak or understand our language?
 
No. 1, they shouldn't have been hired in the first place if they were illegals. No. 2, when people come to this country and want to stay here to work and live, I would think their first priority should be to learn the language. It certainly shouldn't be up to the employer to teach an employee English.
 
If a person from Germany, France or Russia immigrates here, are we expected to learn their language so they are able to work?
 
Let's use a little common sense here. Immigrants are welcome in the U.S. However, I don't believe we must learn to speak their language so they can get a job.
 
I can just imagine what would happen if an American went to Mexico to get a job but could not speak Spanish. I'm sure they would bend over backward to learn English so we could get a job there . . . oh, yeah!
 
Give me a break!
 
Carole Bolduc, Wheat Ridge
 

 
American dreams and nightmares - Rocky Mountain News, March 25, 2003
 
America simply cannot keep allowing hordes of people to move into our country.
 
Already there is a fight between the states, and our urban and rural communities, over our water supply. Already human population is taking up land that our wildlife have a right to and killing the animals that have no more places to move.
 
To say, "Save open space," and not say "Stop immigration," is ridiculous to say the least.
 
This isn't just aimed at the Hispanics who are sneaking across our southern border by the thousands (often obtaining false identification papers), but all immigration. However, it is high time for Mexicans to start having Mexican dreams instead of coming up here and turning American dreams into nightmares.
 
Bush has our military guarding borders all over the world, but doesn't do his duty for us by protecting our borders.
 
Mexico guards its southern border but allows illegal aliens (the proper terminology, not undocumented workers) out by the thousands. President Vicente Fox seems to think that America should open our southern border and allow his charges to become America's responsibility.
 
MARY JANE EAKLOR, Penrose, CO
 

 
Real war should be on illegals - Colorado Daily, March 25, 2003
 
War rumbles and everyone is concerned about terror. But few think about the terror we're importing into our country by the millions each year. Like a bomb blast blessing this week, Senator Graves of Missouri hit the bulls eye for calling on an immediate immigration moratorium. Yes, we are a nation of immigrants. But we no longer can sustain adding 2.3 million more people each year--paralyzing our country.
 
The business class that forces it on us does not face what average Americans face with consequences to our suffocating immigration crisis. Colorado schools are overwhelmed with 50 languages. Unrestricted immigration is bankrupting American social services. Their sheer numbers take jobs and depress wages for our working poor. Gridlock strangles us while our environment spirals downward.
 
Worse, there is no end of the masses of people who are coming to America from cultures totally alien to ours. They bring Colorado diseases such as head lice, tuberculosis, leprosy, Chagas and intestinal diseases. They practice barbaric rituals such as female genital mutilation that cuts the clitoris out of young girls with a razor blade. Colorado enacted a law against it four years ago. Finally, they bring us drugs, illiteracy and unending welfare use to the tune of 68 billion of our taxes each year. What benefit are you receiving from all this immigration? Are you better off?
 
Senator Graves and Congress need to stand up for American citizens who are victims of unrestricted immigration. Can we sustain our lives with another 200 million Americans added past the mid century? Does Bangladesh ring a bell? Everything we take for granted today will not be there for our children. Act locally: www.cairco.org or nationally: www.numbersusa.com.
 
Frosty Wooldridge, Louisville
 

 
U.S., Colorado lucky to have Rep. Tancredo - Rocky Mountain News, March 18, 2003
 
What does News columnist Peter Blake expect Rep. Tom Tancredo to do - declare his love for The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News after they have been seeking his hide for months? ("Tom Tancredo tantrum," Feb. 26.)
 
What is hard to understand is the reluctance of the papers to support a congressman who has the integrity and perseverance to demand enforcement of the immigration laws. Our southern border is in a shambles and at least partially controlled by organized crime.
 
This crisis didn't happen overnight. But something has got to be done, and soon, to stop the flow of illegal immigration from Mexico. A reasonable and considerate plan must be worked out with the sincere participation of both countries. But in the meantime, the U.S. has got to grab the bull by the horns and stop the flow no matter what it takes.
 
Blake tried to make a big thing of Tancredo's decision to run for re-e1ection in spite of his earlier pledge not to.
 
No question this was a tough call for the congressman.
 
But his stellar performance and reputation in the Congress has more than justified his decision. Americans should be glad that Colorado has sent them a congressman who can stand the heat and press the fight for immigration reform.
 
Herbert F. Koether, Denver
 

 
Writer says illegal immigrants bring diseases - Colorado Daily, March 16, 2003
 
Why not have American citizens support a rally for deportation of all illegal alien parents who have subverted our immigration laws? Send them back so they can stand in line like all law abiding immigrants. Then, we could take care of our kids' educational needs instead of Mexico's kids. There are other reasons we need to support immigration laws.
 
Few Americans realize that illegal alien parents and their children carry a host of diseases because they did not pass through our normal immigration health care facilities. When they come here illegally, they are not screened for tuberculosis. The result is 16,000 new cases of incurable MDR TB directly from Mexico in the past 3 years.
 
What was Mexico's problem is fast becoming our problem. Since they work in fast food and hotels, it's spreading into Colorado. It won't be so funny when you catch it. When they come here illegally, they are not screened for leprosy. The result is 7,000 new cases of leprosy that was unheard of in America five years ago, but now is growing as they work in fast food restaurants. Unfortunately, restaurants who hire illegals don't screen them for diseases. There are 150,000 illegal aliens in Colorado. Grabbing a sack of hamburgers could give you a bag of diseases you never expected.
 
When they come here illegally, they are not screened for Hepatitis A or C. The result is thousands of us are exposed to Hepatitis because illegal parents work as dish washers and day care staff. When your child contracts it, you will be upset. Another disease illegal parents bring with them is 'head lice', because, again, they did not run through our health care checks. As their illegal kids go to our schools, your kids are at risk for head lice. Tens of thousands of cases are recorded in California. They're also bringing in Chagas Disease which is a parasite and nothing to mess with. Again, their kids have it because they did not pass through a health check.
 
Finally, our country is under an invasion of thousands upon thousands into the millions (about 9 million to date) of poor, diseased and uneducated people who are spreading their maladies among us. They are disrupting our functioning society, depressing wages, stealing American jobs, bankrupting our health care services and are undermining our ability to take care of our own children. Since they do not practice family planning, you can expect an endless line crossing our borders. At some point, you will be affected as you lose your job, lose your health, your child's place in college is taken or you lose your life to theses diseases.
 
The more you sit, watch, wait and listen, the worse the problem will become. Please call Udall, Allard and Campbell. Demand they put troops on the southern border to stop the estimated 800,000 illegals coming across annually. It's your country and your life as well as your childrens' future.
 
Frosty Wooldridge, Louisville, CO
 

 
Re: 'Another kind of invasion threatens US' - Colorado Daily, March 11, 2003
 
Around Colorado, educators and students struggle while our US congress spends billions of dollars a week on armaments. While we might win the war in Iraq, it's possible we'll keep losing the education of American children. School districts like St. Vrain are only the tip of the iceberg. The reason for our losing in education stems from another kind of 'war' or invasion of our country.
 
Democracy is a delicate form of government that requires an educated populace with a similar moral/ethical foundation including the same language spoken by all citizens. We are losing these aspects in American education today. How?
 
What is 'THE' single factor that is causing a conflagration in US education? Answer: A never ending onslaught of too many people with too many children. The USA added 33 million citizens in the last decade and over 50 different languages. By adding 3.3 million people per year, classroom teachers across the nation stagger under the daily crisis of trying to teach in an impossible climate of confusion. Note that Denver schools suffered a 47 percent drop out rate last year. Democracy can not endure with THAT many uneducated citizens operating in our technological society.
 
California is the 'canary in the mine' state showing us the folly of continued unrestricted immigration. With 35 million people overwhelming the state, they must build and staff a new school every day to keep up with the growth of the student population. One of my colleagues in LA said he is trying to teach to 58 different languages. Instead, students are taking 'culture appreciation classes'. They graduate functionally illiterate.
 
The future of American society moves on the quality of education provided to our upcoming generations. However, Isaac Asimov said, "Democracy can not survive overpopulation."
 
Looking at past generations' methods for dealing with problems not so different than today's--is helpful. As a result of what was formerly the largest wave of immigration in 1890 to the early 1900s, officials put a cap on the wave of immigrants. Educators set about schooling and "Americanizing" the huge number of adults and children.
 
Today's educators are trying to speak 60 different languages and are worried about being politically correct to theirs and our country's consequences. It can't be done. Newcomers need to speak our language. Differences in languages in a multi-cultural society create confusion, conflict and violence.
 
Today's challenges are similar in that the sheer numbers are staggering. But with the added burden of an immigration policy that is stuck in 20th century job-market standards. Most of the 1.5 million immigrants each year for the last 35 years lack even basic literacy skills. Another missing factor from previous immigrant waves is a larger pool of competition for low-wage jobs. Thus, poverty follows 1st, 2nd and even 3rd generation, stifling the Melting Pot's magic of upward mobility. Even worse, this modern immigration wave has no end.
 
Any suggestion that it might be capped to provide time for our social, physical, civic, natural, and cultural infrastructures to catch up, is met with hysterical and angry accusations of bigotry and xenophobia. Education is the open sesame to the American Dream -- always has been, always will be. When the quality is marginalized by sheer number, language confusion, cultural and economic dislocations, etc. the future of our American society is at risk. How will the consequences in Colorado develop as we're forced to add another 4 million people?
 
What astounds average citizens is that our leaders dance around the enormous 'gorilla' in the kitchen that keeps growing by the day. It's SO big, it can't be educated. We need to stop feeding 'it' more people which will make it worse. If you would like to take action locally, contact www.cairco.org and nationally, www.numbersusa.com.
 
Frosty Wooldridge, Louisville, CO
 

 
Medical treatment for aliens - The Washington Times, March 9, 2003
 
Is there any reason why the government of Mexico couldn't be billed for the cost of medical treatment for its aliens? Why should the U.S. taxpayer have to pay for it, especially when we can't even provide adequate medical coverage for our own veterans? This should become a condition for keeping our borders porous in order to relieve the population pressure in Mexico.
 
RANDAL MORGAN, Aurora, Colo.
 

 
Illegals - The Colorado Daily, March 8, 2003
 
Last fall in Commerce City, Colorado, a food service worker exposed over 1000 people to Hepatitis A before he was discovered. His disease isn't the only one Coloraodoans are being exposed to this year.
 
In the past 40 years, a total of 900 cases of leprosy were recorded in the United States. Today more than 7,000 new cases arrived in this country from 'leprosy hotspots' in Mexico, Brazil, India and the Caribbean.
 
"And those are the ones we know about," said. Dr. William Levis, physician at Belevue Hospital's Hansen's Disease Clinic. "It's spreading, too," he said. "Many of our patients have never left the country, but came down with the disease through exposure."
 
As a result, leprosy is now officially endemic to the Northeastern United states for the first time ever. Illegal aliens who work in food service will bring the most exposure to Americans. Leprosy's symptoms - bumpy rashes, skin indentations and loss of feeling in hands and feet - are often misdiagnosed for a variety of disorders including bug bites.
 
Another 'bug' riding in the bodies of newcomers to America is tuberculosis. Sixteen thousand new cases of TB were detected in the U.S. of a disease that was once deemed 'extinct'. In a recent article, 'THE PATIENT PREDATOR', in "Mother Jones" magazine, Dr. Kevin Patterson said, "In the 1990's, cases of foreign born Americans rose from 29 percent to 41.6 percent. Strains of TB once found only in Mexico have migrated to borders states like Texas, Arizona and California. We have no cure for these strains."
 
Dr. Lee Reichmann of New York said in that same article that "At least half of all diagnosed TB cases are found among foreign-born people have moved to the USA. We sit on the edge of a potential catastrophe."
 
Most Americans sit, wait, watch and listen, but don't do anything until personally affected. In Colorado, an illegal alien working at a Commerce City Taco Bell last fall exposed 1000 patrons to Hepatitis A. With more than 2 million immigrants arriving each year, both legal and illegal, you and your childen are at increased risk. If you would like to do something, please act locally at www.cairco.org or nationally at www.numbersusa.com.
 
Frosty Wooldridge, Louisville, CO
 

 
0.03% capture rate - The Rocky Mountain News, March 8, 2003
 
On Feb. 28, the Rocky Mountain News reported "Arrests skyrocket for illegal aliens," and the "reorganization of the INS," an organization of bewildering incompetence. Both stories stated that an arrest of 12,183 illegals resulted in a "12-fold increase in three years."
 
With more than 400,000 illegals in the region, that represents a capture rate of 0.03 percent.
 
I could do better than that by myself in one month just in Denver.
 
MICHAEL BROWN, Morrison, CO
 

 
Organs for citizens - The Rocky Mountain News, March 5, 2003
 
Last year, 5,542 Americans died waiting for organ transplants. It is immoral to allow illegal aliens to benefit from our limited transplant opportunities.
 
Or are these just organs that Americans, like our jobs, don't want?
 
Linda Lou Roy. Snowmass
 

 
Re: 'Drugs and Terror' - The Colorado Daily, February 27, 2003
 
Stalin said, "God is on the side of the biggest guns." Unfortunately, he didn't have enough information. After 30 years and billions of dollars spent on the drug war, an armada of dealers and illegal aliens continues its invasion across our southern border. There's not a kid today who can't score drugs in an hour.
 
Ironically, our congress has funded 50,000 troops on the Korean border, 50,000 in Bosnia and 150,000 in Iraq. But on the border of Mexico where all those drugs pour through, NOT ONE SOLDIER is deployed to protect Americans.
 
Among the many consequences of ineffectual border control, are the horrific wars in Colombia. From gang-terrorized U.S. communities, to millions of U.S. citizens enslaved by addiction, to the almost complete narco-corruption of Mexico-- the list goes on.
 
By defending our borders with troops, the drug cartels would not continue growing to a point of dominating these countries. If our borders were guarded with force, the multinational drug business would dry up.
 
From one newspaper in Laredo, Texas, note the compiled drug interdictions, which are said to be because of post-9/11 increased security measures: 2/8 1,600 lbs of marijuana; 2/11 600 lbs. cocaine; 2/13 243 lbs of marijuana & 50 packages of crack cocaine; 2/13 13-person drug ring broken up - smuggling since 1996; 2/15 2.5 tons of marijuana; 209 lbs cocaine; 37 lbs methampetamine, $10,126 in undeclared U.S. currency; 2/19 143 lbs of cocaine. Think what our professional soldiers could do!
 
As a former US Army Medical Service Corps officer who worked with addicts from Vietnam and as a volunteer for recovering drug addicts, I have no words to describe the despair and family ruin that these drugs inflict on MILLIONS of Americans and also families in nations that are narco-corrupted. It is hypocritical for the U.S. government to use war on terror in their anti-drug ads [if you buy drugs, you aide the enemy], but do NOTHING to stop drugs at our borders. Contact www.cairco.org or www.numbersusa.com if you want to make your voice heard.
 
Frosty Wooldridge, Louisville
 

 
Extreme Numbers Create Extreme Consequences - Louisville Times, February 27, 2003
 
Let me understand what I read in last week's Louisville Times: The drought continues with no end in sight. The entire front range will be under water restrictions. Louisville will be under restrictions indefinitely. The drought is forecasted for several more years. Residents must conserve water.
 
On the same front page, the second story reported massive development of the Ridge with 24,000 foot office buildings, churches, etc. No doubt other cities are going ahead with massive building projects this summer.
 
This same week, a Colorado paper reported: 'DROUGHT: GLOBAL WARMING 'TRAIN WRECK' FORECAST FOR THE WEST' "...even as a best-case scenario, it forecasts a virtual train wreck, with water supplies falling far short of projected future demands for water by cities, farms and wildlife," said Tim Barnett, research physicist at Scripps Institution.
 
His colleague Bill Patzert added, "The problem in the West is not climate change because rain and snow are constant, it's too many people using too much water. If nothing happens, we're in trouble. If something happens, it's worse because we keep adding water taps to a finite supply."
 
What is it that city planners with college educations and obviously brilliant intellects don't get about a limited supply of water? What will be the plan as the drought continues once they add 100,000 new water taps to Boulder Country? When was it that they were going to stop building because the water is not there? Please explain your reasoning to the common citizens who will not be able to water their lawns, flush their toilets or wash their cars. What happens when we are reduced to taking 30 second showers and doing rain dances before we go to bed at night?
 
The more extreme our numbers the more extreme our consequences.
 
Frosty Wooldridge, Louisville
 

 
Columnist excels at twisting fact, reason - The Rocky Mountain News, February 26, 2003
 
The talented Tina Griego can so twist and distort fact and reason that she should seek more appropriate avenues to express her manifold gift.
 
In one of her latest contortions/distortions ("Acting out of fear means terror won," Feb. 13), she somehow concludes that passing state legislation to halt the use of the sham Mexican matricula card would mean - get this! - we would be conceding to terrorism. Twist and shout!
 
Griego just makes up stuff, then beats it beyond recognition. For example, Tina wrote, "The worse the economy is, the fewer illegal immigrants there are." Oh, really? Griego should read the latest Immigration and Naturalization Service figures showing the numbers of permanent illegal alien entries into the U.S. are greater, during this time of economic downturn, than ever.
 
She seems not to know the sham ID card is issued on the strength of false, dubious and unverified documents by agents of a corrupt foreign government. There is no integrity in the issuing process - period. (See our Web site, www.cairco.org, for the truth on the matricula card).
 
But somehow, Griego rhetorically concludes, "Would you rather someone have some idea of who is here and where they are living or shall we all remain in the dark?" No, Ms. Griego. The vast majority of us, as shown in poll after poll, would rather have illegals deported. Indeed, a Channel 7 online poll showed 87 percent of respondents do not want the sham matricula card accepted.
 
Griego's talents at twisting and distorting fact and reason are too limited in the News. She really should be working in a pretzel factory.
 
Mike McGarry, Spokesman, Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform, Lakewood
 

 
Fostering lawlessness - Denver Post, February 26, 2003
 
Re: "Matriculas not the culprit," Feb. 20 editorial.
 
Let's face the fact that this card is needed only by illegal immigrants who entered into this country without documents. I am an immigrant, and never needed this type of card because the U.S. government provided all the required documents that eventually helped me become a naturalized citizen.
 
So my question is: Why do we want to create a system to help people who have broken our laws?
 
If we no longer believe in the immigration laws, then let's change them, and dispose of the matricula card. The matricula card may not be the direct result of the 9/11 tragedy, but it will create lawlessness in the U.S. It is this type of lawlessness that eventually breaks down governments. Our existing government is what makes us a great country - one that so many others wish to enter.
 
MARLENE GUERRERO, Longmont
 

 
Multiple matriculas - Denver Post, February 26, 2003
 
Last Oct. 10, The Post published an article by Michael Riley that mentioned the case of an illegal immigrant who had three of the matricula consular cards, all bearing his photo but with three different names.
 
On Feb. 20, your editorial writers waxed enthusiastic about the rigorous procedures Mexican consulates go through in issuing these cards. These writers should read The Denver Post.
 
PAUL NACHMAN, Redondo Beach, California
 

 
The wrong means - Denver Post, February 26, 2003
 
Recognizing the matricula consular cards as secure documents is a complete fraud.
 
It is known that illegal immigrants dispose of all identification when coming into this country. Since the consulate does not fingerprint applicants, it would be almost impossible for them to identify the person applying for the card. enforcement officers have found multiple matricula cards showing the same photo with different names.
 
Mexico, a corrupt government, is involved in lobbying U.S. cities and banks to accept this bogus card - despite the fact that major Mexican banks do not accept the matricula as identification when opening new accounts.
 
I see this as another attempt by the Mexican government to provide legitimacy to lawbreakers and to provide amnesty to millions of lawbreakers.
 
Former Gov. Lamm is right to support HB 1224. This is in the best interest of our country and our state.
 
W. WEATHERFORD, Littleton
 

 
The wrong problem - Denver Post, February 26, 2003
 
Your editorial's support for the matricula says it all: Such a document will help legal and "illegal immigrants solve a host of problems, such as cashing paychecks at banks that require photo IDs" and help in obtaining "business licenses and library cards (and) access to recreation centers, as well as rent videos or open bank accounts."
 
Federal law, however, prohibits the aiding and abetting of illegal immigration into our country. By your own acknowledgment, issuance of the matricula will provide such assistance and is contrary to the the rule of law. The problem in our country is the active encouragement of illegal immigration, with current estimates showing that as many or more than 11 million illegal immigrants now live here. Our country should not be in the business of solving the problems of illegal aliens.
 
ROBERT W. LUPPI, Montrose
 

 
Matricula consular a cover for criminals - Glenwood Springs Post Independent, February 25, 2003
 
The only requirement to receive the matricula consular document is Mexican citizenship. No criminal background checks are run. Local law enforcement have turned it into a sort of protection badge. Criminality is rampant in Mexico and crosses our porous border. Mexican drug traffickers have become major wholesalers throughout the United States.
 
The southwest border isn't the Rio Grande anymore. It is in Atlanta, Chicago, North Carolina and even Yonkers.
 
From bases on the West Coast, they have moved across the country, hiding among fruit pickers in Washington, resort workers in Colorado, and construction workers in Minnesota.
 
The vast majority of illegal Mexicans are not criminals, although they commit criminal acts like crossing our border, engaging in identity theft, and using fake, stolen, or borrowed Social Security numbers. An American who did this would be arrested and prosecuted, but this is rarely done in communities with large illegal populations.
 
The matricula is giving both illegals and local law enforcement a way to ignore this troubling reality.
 
Bob Anderson, Glenwood Springs
 

 
Whither water woes? - The Denver Post, February 24, 2003
Re: "Can Peyton Place cure our water ills?" Feb. 15 Bob Ewegen column.
 
Ewegen writes an interesting piece that fails to deal with future realities. Rain and snow remain constant through the years, but our population will add another 4 million by mid-century from immigration. The Colorado Constitution says that water "belongs to the people." How will that play out when Colorado's population doubles in 40 years? Or when California's adds another 20 million in the next 25 years?
 
California has 53 congressmen and, in 25 years, will have more, while Colorado only has seven. Population equals consumption and water equals survival. When the water wars of the 21st century really get serious, who do you think will win? When Denver and The Denver Post go to bat for illegal in-migration and massive growth, the domino effect of their actions will just throw fuel on the fires of water competition.between regions with population and political clout. That's not to mention other impacts of imported immigration poverty, such as schools and hospitals overcrowded to the point of providing marginal services.
 
It makes me wonder: Who is in charge and what are they thinking? I'd like Ewegen to write a piece on what a drought will mean in 50 years with 8 million people in the state.
 
Eleanor Roosevelt said it 50 years ago: "We must prevent human tragedy rather than run around trying to save ourselves after an event has already occurred. Unfortunately, history clearly shows that we arrive at catastrophe by failing to meet the situation, by failing to act when we should have acted. The opportunity passes us by and the next disaster is always more difficult and compounded than the last one."
 
Worried about water for lawns? We'll be lucky to flush our toilets, let alone grab a glass of water. So much for leadership in Colorado, from Mayor Wellington Webb to Gov. Bill "Pavement" Owens.
 
FROSTY WOOLDRIDGE, Louisville
 

 
Columnist doesn't understand 'illegal' - Rocky Mountain News, February 24, 2003
 
This letter is in response to "Acting out of fear means terror won," Tina Griego's Feb. 13 column blasting former Gov. Dick Lamm on the matricula consular illegal alien ID card issue. Obviously, Griego does not understand the meaning of illegal. Illegal means not according to or authorized by law: unlawful, illicit and not sanctioned by official rules.
 
Our government leaders are going to end up with a rebellion on their hands if they are not careful. We are living in dangerous times and perhaps we need more Dick Lamms speaking out for the sovereignty of this country. A special thank-you to Rep. Don Lee for having the courage to initiate a legislative bill to stop this nonsense. Luckily, it passed out of committee 7-4.
 
We will see what happens next. It's time this state gets it together before we become another California, Arizona or Texas. Illegal aliens no matter what country they are from need to be deported and no time like the present. Lamm and Lee have the support of many Coloradans. Illegal immigration must be stopped and it must be stopped now.
 
Candace Stark, Kittredge
 

 
Re: "Stapleton to add 12,000 new homes" - South Weld Sun (CO), February 13, 2003
 
"You can't stop growth," is a wildly oxymoronic statement in a recent local TV evening report on the 12,000 homes being added to Stapleton with the Roselyn Court development. As one of the Colorado citizens who continues struggling in Denver gridlock, poison air and a worsening lack of water, who thinks 12,000 new homes added to the quagmire already in Denver will create more water and clean air? Why are leaders like Mayor Webb and Governor Owens creating more problems for the future instead of mitigating them?
 
The evening news shot showed Webb and developers digging new ground with silver shovels. Unknowingly, they dug graves for future generations of people who won't have clean air to breathe or water to drink.
 
In a recent piece, 'DROUGHT: GLOBAL WARMING 'TRAIN WRECK' FORECAST FOR THE WEST', a sobering reality will 'stop growth'. It's called Nature! A new st udy explained, "Even as a best-case scenario, it forecasts a virtual train wreck, with water supplies falling far short of the projected future demands for water by cities, farms and wildlife."
 
"You'd like there to be some good news in that somewhere but unfortunately there is not," said Tim Barnett, research marine physicist at Scripps Institution.
 
"The problem in the West is not climate change, it's too many people using too much water," Barnett said. "If nothing happens, we're in trouble. If something happens, it's worse. Precipitation levels will remain constant. It's the human population that needs to stabilize."
 
I'd like to invite the developers of Roselyn Court to 'Water Reality Course 101' to inform them that the more you build, the more you create disaster for future generations. Please explain to me the 'point' of overloading and overwhelming our natural world with too many people?
 
Why am I concerned? Because everything that happens in Denver will happen in every county and town in Colorado.
 
Colorado must stabilize its population. It's the only way any of us will be able to flush our toilets and enjoy a glass of water. If you want to help, go to www.numbersusa.com, or locally, www.cairco.org.
 
FROSTY WOOLDRIDGE, Louisville, CO
 

 
What's she doing helping illegal immigrants? - Colorado Daily, February 10, 2003
 
In her letter to the Colorado Daily (Jan. 13), Laurie Herndon, a local immigration lawyer, tries to justify her teaching illegal aliens at a February 28, 2002 workshop called "Know Your Rights: No Human Being is Illegal" how to avoid arrest by agents of our Immigration and Naturalization Service.
 
Aren't attorneys supposed to uphold our laws, local, state, national, even international, rather than teach lawbreakers how to avoid or circumvent laws? Aren't criminal defense lawyers committed in the court room to defending the accused person, in strict accordance with the laws pertaining to the case? Hmmm! Here we have a lawyer telling illegal aliens how to avoid obeying the law. Herndon's efforts to rationalize her defense of illegal immigrants won't wash. Oh, some work hard. Yes, but they are breaking the law. Good or bad, an illegal alien is breaking the law. Oh, they want a better life for their families. So do bankrobbers or thieves of all kinds, but that fact does not excuse them from the law.
 
Herndon writes that, duh, well, "Unauthorized immigrant workers pay taxes." So what? Should illegal aliens not pay taxes? If they didn't they might not be able to get any employment at all. The real problem, she says, "is one of U.S. dependency: our economy is addicted to low-wage labor, and much of it is supplied by immigrants from Mexico." Who are responsible for our economy's addiction? Scumbag greedy employers who hire illegal aliens, lawyers like Herndon, and the illegal immigrants themselves-to name only a few. And, of course, President Bush and members of Congress from both major parties who refuse to close our borders for fear of losing a few Hispanic votes.
 
If our nation's economy indeed becomes dependent upon the low-wage labor of illegal immigrants (as I deduce from Herndson's murky "U.S. dependency") then we Americans will indeed have lost our national independence and sovereignty, and in less time than we might think America will be relegated to the ash heap of history. A nation that WILL not defend its own borders from illegal entries is not a nation at all.
 
Charles L. King, Boulder, CO
 

 
Helping illegals is breaking the law - Colorado Daily, February 6, 2003
 
It is my opinion that American citizens who are helping illegal immigrants stay in this country are violating the law and intensifying the movement of more illegal immigrants into this country. Any person here illegally should be deported and we the citizens of this country should not be helping them stay. Not only are they a great burden on our tax system, they are causing many problems in our communities.
 
Many of our communities are infiltrated with illegal immigrants that came here to work. Now that we are in recession, many of the jobs have vanished, but the Mexicans remain and they make up for lost wages by pushing narcotics and crime levels are up. There are many documented examples of this across the United States.
 
We need to help these people by sending them back to their homeland and ridding our communities of people who are a burden. We cannot continue to grow our country in this manner. It will get to a point where the country cannot support the growth and America will eventually wind up as a third world country.
 
The use of illegal drivers licensees, illegal social security numbers or other illegal cards such as the so called "matricula cards" are a most serious violation to the law and the security of our country. Also, anyone who has helped or is helping illegal immigrants avoid the law (INS) is not only unpatriotic but is a traitor. These people should also be treated as law violators.
 
People like Laurie Herndon and Ron Tupa (Proposed bill in the State Senate to legalize drivers licenses for illegal immigrants) are really hurting our country and adding to the illegal immigrant problem. I hope the citizens of Colorado will voice their opposition to such ridiculous proposals.
 
Grant Mitchell, Englewood, CO
 

 
Mexican meddling going unchecked - Colorado Daily, February 6, 2003
Rocky Mountain News, January 28, 2003
 
It is about time someone spoke up about the meddling Mexican consulate's lobbying agent, Mario Hernandez ("Owens questions Mexican consulate," Jan. 16). I have wondered myself why an agent of the corrupt Mexican government is allowed to skulk around the Capitol trying to influence legislation.
 
The government of Mexico is meddling in state legislatures across the U.S., with a grand plan to influence the passing of legislation on matters that are the exclusive prerogatives of U.S. citizens.
 
Other Mexican consulates are even more egregious in their blatant butting-in. Worldnetdaily recently reported "Mexican consulate staff posing as U.S. immigration agents interfered with a murder-and-smuggling probe following a Border Patrol chase of illegal aliens that ended in a fatal freeway crash near San Diego."
 
I say we should shut down all 46 Mexican consulates in the U.S. until Americans in Mexico have equal butting-in rights.
 
Milo House, Basalt
 

 
Numbers swelling; crises are brewing - Colorado Daily, February 4, 2003
 
Stalin said, "God is on the side of the biggest guns." However, an invasion of "sheer" numbers racing across our southern borders proves that Stalin didn't have enough information.
 
Today, because of our elected leaders from President Bush, U.S. Sens. Ben Nighthorse Campbell and Wayne Allard, U.S. Rep. Mark Udall and our own city officials, we have 10 million illegal aliens and 200,000 in Colorado who have broken into our country. One illegal alien, John Malvo, killed 18 and terrorized D.C. for a month. Nineteen of them killed 2,800 Americans. Still, our officials allowed 800,000 to illegally cross our borders last year. Which one will be the next sniper? Will the shooting take place in Boulder? Denver? Will your loved one be a victim?
 
Ironically, we have Boulder immigration lawyers holding workshops on how to evade INS agents - while using taxpayer money. Our own public officials are taking Mexican ID cards and letting them stay here.
 
Do you feel the consequences in Colorado and every corner of our society since we opened the flood gates on immigration in 1965? Our nation is bursting at the seams from over 84 million people added from around the world. We added 33 million in the last decade. More than 1.2 million slammed into Colorado. Our water is short, our air is polluted, our schools are overloaded. Gridlock stalks our workdays and resources dwindle with each new human addition.
 
Whereas immigration once assisted this country, it's now overwhelming our "carrying capacity." California is a quagmire of humanity swimming in scarcity and environmental dilemmas.
 
We're inviting a form of national suicide. Take action by calling the president, Congress, radio, TV and writing letters to the editor. The more extreme our numbers the more extreme our children's consequences.
 
FROSTY WOOLDRIDGE, Louisville
 

 
Sean, you ignorant slut! - CU-Denver Advocate, Week of February 3, 2003
 
Re: Ignorance in immigration By Sean Cronin, Jan. 22
 
While reading Sean Cronin's sophomoric-is he in fact a sophomore?-editorial "Ignorance in immigration", I was reminded of the old Saturday Night Live skit where Dan Aykroyd's TV anchorman character would turn to Jane Curtain's anchor character and exclaim, "Jane, you ignorant slut!"
 
Cronin ignorantly wrote that the sham Mexican ID card issued by agents of the corrupt Mexican government for their illegal aliens residing in Colorado is for "people to be able to identify themselves..." Cronin must have bbeen slutting under the back row seats at the debate he claims to have attended and missed it when we showed that the sham ID's are issued by the office of the Mexican consulate on the strength of fake, dubious and unverified documents. The sham cards do not identify their holders. Individuals have been found by police to be in possession of multiple such IDs issued by the same corrupt consulates.
 
Cronin, shameless and sullied, seems more interested in hosing his readers than worrying if they will respect him in the morning. He should know, however, that our concern about the immorality that is mass illegal immigration we gained from the life and words of none other than Cesar Chavez, perhaps America's most severe critic of illegal immigration anarchy.
 
Given his demonstrated "ignorance in immigration," it is unlikely Cronin will set his wayward life on the straight and narrow and see that his editorial ejaculations come exclusively from his own hand stimulating his own ego.
 
Mike McGarry, Spokesman, Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform (CAIR)
 

 
We shouldn't make it legal or easy for 'illegals' - Colorado Daily, February 4, 2003
 
The diatribe by Laurie Herndon is so fraught with misconceptions and half-truths that it's hard to know where to start. Probably the most important fact to state is that she is an immigration lawyer. She isn't Mother Theresa, toiling in the slums of India, for the love of mankind. She makes her living, and probably a quite handsome one, by working with illegal immigrants. She charges them to help them gain an "adjustment" in their immigration status. From the tenor of her letter, one might be tempted to believe that she has nothing but the welfare of these poor misunderstood aliens at heart. Not true. This is her job - one that is distinctly at odds with the wishes and welfare of the majority of Americans.
 
As to the use of the Mexican ID in order to make illegal aliens lives a little easier here in America - is that really what we want? Do we really want to allow them to establish themselves even more securely in the American way of life? Do we really want to reward them for jumping the line to get here by giving them the opportunity to open bank accounts, sign contracts, get building permits, possibly even in the future qualify for driver's licenses?
 
The Mexican ID depends on the reliability and honesty of the Mexican government to verify a person's identity. This responsibility should be that of the US government's. When a police officer stops an illegal carrying a Mexican ID, all they know is that they are probably here illegally and that they have shown some kind of easily counterfeited identification to the Mexican consulate to obtain the ID. They have no access to the criminal records in Mexico, nor to Mexico's birth certificate or its Department of Motor Vehicles database. This is post 9-11 security?
 
Finally, Ms. Herndon dredges up that tired old myth that we need illegals in order to keep our economy going. Perhaps she has missed the last three years and the continuing layoff of Americans? Perhaps she doesn't realize that there are millions of Americans who would gladly work on construction sites, landscaping crews, and other small and large businesses? The current economic conditions and the continuing use of illegals by American companies just proves that the slogan "They do the jobs no one else wants to do" is the lie it always has been. Illegal aliens allow businesses to bypass the American worker by employing illegals at substandard wages.
 
Rhonda Roseto, Westminster, CO
 

 
Why encourage anarchy? - Colorado Daily, February 2, 2003
 
Why does Ms. Herndon encourage anarchy by insisting that law breakers be rewarded? She asserts that anyone who illegally enters this country should be rewarded with an i.d. card that affirms the holder's right to snub our laws.
 
Most of us descend from migrants who entered legally under a quota system. Quotas were put in place so that the nation could absorb the incoming migration in an orderly fashion.
 
The current inflow of illegals is so massive it is destabilizing our nation.