Letters and Op-Eds

By:
Fred Elbel
Post Independent
12 October 2015

You state in your Oct. 5 editorial “We need immigration law grounded in reality”: “We stand with immigrants. Proudly.”

For clarity’s sake, which were you referring to: lawful immigrants — that is, Lawful Permanent Residents, asylees or refugees? Or were you referring to people who made illegal, unauthorized U.S. entry?

It is crucial to clearly delineate between supporting legal entry versus supporting illegal breaking and entering into our country. Obfuscating terminology does not incontrovertibly grant the upper hand in the immigration debate.

You also make allusions to “rounding up and deporting 11 million.” Research reveals that many more than 11 million people reside in the U.S. illegally. Yet no one needs to be rounded up. All we need to do is to make it impossible for illegal aliens to work (via mandatory E-Verify workplace verification), and they will voluntarily return home to reunite with their families.

Fred Elbel

Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform

Editor’s note: We favor a path to citizenship for people who are living here lawfully and those who follow appropriate procedures to gain legal status. We strongly support congressional action to broaden that path. We favor deporting felons but doing all the country can to not break up families.
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Related: Last week’s editorial “We stand in support of immigrants”

By:
Steve Gehrke, Aurora
The Denver Post
25 February 2015

Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock’s guest commentary about breaking promises to illegal immigrants is an example of what is wrong with this country ...

The real promise broken is the one to the American people taken by President Obama to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Twenty-six states are fighting the president’s executive order on immigration ...I

f we do not abide by the Constitution and separation of powers, then we no longer have a country ...

By:
Marty Lich
Aspen Times
9 July 2013
Dear Editor:
 
Having read “They need to be in our shoes to understand us” (July 8, The Aspen Times), there are two statements that need clarification.
 
The first being this gentleman doesn’t feel he is stealing anyone’s job — that he is simply doing the hard work. If he is filling a job, he is taking that job slot. If American residents do not want that job, U.S. employers can hire through both the H2A and the H2B visa programs currently.
 
A little history lesson is called for here regarding the second comment of “they’ll put a fence around the border. It will be just like Germany.” The border fence in the U.S. is to protect our country from unlawful entrance. The wall in Germany was built to trap her citizens inside. No one could leave.
 
Last comment regarding the Senate bill and to “think of the majority.” Correct. The majority of polled Americans do not want an amnesty nor any new immigration reform. We want what was promised to us back in 1986 — a secured border and enforced current law(s).
 
So please, do walk in our African-American and our youth’s shoes and stop any amnesty “reform.” Start employing the above-mentioned who, per the labor force statistics, have a unemployment rate of 23.7 percent and 16.1 percent, respectively.
 
Marty Lich
 
The Tribune
4 August 2012

Crime in Greeley is shaping up to be the classic good news, bad news scenario.

Do you want the good news or the bad news first? Well, the good news is, for the first six months of the year, Greeley’s overall crime rate went down 4 percent.

The bad news is the amount of crime in the month of July alone might blow that decrease out of the water for the last six months of the year ...

July has seen a dramatic increase in murders and aggravated assaults, including several gang-related shootings. That will likely push up the statistics for the second-half of the year.

There are some specific circumstances that have lead to this recent crime wave. We do believe Greeley police Chief Jerry Garner has a valid point in that some parolees being released by the state prison system are coming back to Greeley and fueling the fire. But that is a situation every community is having to deal with on some level, and with our overcrowded prison system, the issue is complicated ...

We also appreciate that in Greeley at least, our law enforcement leaders have been willing to admit we do have a gang problem and are trying to address it. Leaders in other communities, whether for public relations reasons or simply because they have their head in the sand, don’t truthfully acknowledge the amount of gang activity going on in their towns and cities.


 

By:
William R. Schneider, Salem
StatesmanJournal.com
16 October 2011

In Alabama they have started to enforce immigration laws. The effect was that many jobs previously held by illegal aliens have opened up for U.S. citizens.

The lines to fill these jobs was long and they were being filled with U.S. citizens.

If we want more jobs for citizens, we in Oregon should also enforce our immigration laws. One good start would be to make E-Verify mandatory, eliminating illegal aliens and opening many jobs for our own U.S. citizens.