Letters to the editor: some thoughts on immigration

Stop fighting, establish a policy

Is the southern border still in crisis? Gov. Greg Abbott seems to think so. He has promised to keep sending buses of migrants to sanctuary cities across the country. The only problem is that the number of migrants has dropped so much that there aren’t enough people to fill the buses.

Sanctuary city staff at receiving sites are idle. The flow of migrants is now barely a trickle. That’s great news. Abbott claims it’s the razor wire, increased border patrols and the wall that are finally working. The federal government claims it’s President Joe Biden’s executive order that makes seeking asylum extremely difficult and Mexico’s efforts to deter migrants. Both sides are right.

Imagine if the two sides sat down to work together to craft a sensible and humane border policy. Oh, yes, they did in February, and the House of Representatives, under pressure from Donald Trump, killed the congressional bill that would have created a sensible border policy.

It’s time to put aside partisan politics and offer the American people a border policy that will last for generations.

Marian Levinstein, Lantana

There is a real commitment here

Re: “Governor, take this olive branch: Walz’s proposal to Abbott on the immigration crisis is a chance for the Texas governor to work with the other side,” August 16 editorial.

I applaud the editors for admitting that Republicans aren’t the only ones standing in the way of immigration reform. So why not go a step further? Actually call for compromise and insist that the Senate first stop ignoring and immediately address the existing immigration reform bill in the House, HR 2. I mean, it’s already passed the House.

Here’s how it might work: The Senate considers HR 2, analyzes it, debates it, holds committee hearings to gather evidence for and against it, amends it, takes it up, and votes on it. All in public.

No Republican would try to filibuster a House bill. The two chambers then form a committee made up of members from each to negotiate a compromise on the differences. We could even call the committee a “conference committee” in which something called “reconciliation” would be done.

There are no bills drafted in secret that are passed in one chamber or another, without debate, without time to read them, without the possibility of modifying their grounds. Did I mention that we do all this in public?

What am I thinking? That’s too radical. Almost like something out of a book. School rock.

Eric Zepp, Plan

Another Texas Waltz Overture

Regarding this editorial about Tim Walz’s proposal to Greg Abbott on the immigration crisis, I would suggest that a different approach is more likely to bear fruit. Next time, try saying, “Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, please allow Governor Abbott to work with Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz in an effort to better secure our southern border with Mexico.”

Kenneth Mathias, Grand Prairie

Nice admission from Dem

It’s good that a prominent Democrat has finally admitted the obvious fact that there is a border crisis. It would have been even better to admit that there was no crisis until the Biden-Harris administration took office.

What’s next? Admitting that the high inflation that has occurred over the past three years is seriously hurting the average family? He also comments on the fact that politicians used to say “I’ll work with anyone who wants to work with me,” but somehow that has now become political poison.

Just look at the Democratic presidential debates leading up to the 2020 election, when Kamala Harris scored major points by accusing Joe Biden of doing exactly that. I wonder if that’s yet another policy that candidate Harris will now change her stance on, like fracking, defunding the police, etc.

Les Gregory, Frisco

The role of US foreign aid

The faces of the people arriving at our southern border tell many stories. Those stories reflect much of what is happening in our world: economic crisis, the rise of authoritarian regimes, the growth of narco-terrorism and gangs, and the widespread failure of some countries’ leaders to be accountable to their governments.

Of course, the easy answer is to slam the door shut and turn our backs on the world, ignoring the underlying problems that will ultimately come knocking at our door. America is a world leader in the fight to end poverty and preventable disease and promote economic growth. People are not willing to flee stable, healthy nations where democracy triumphs.

A key to addressing forced migration concretely and effectively is to fully support funding for international programs like Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. These and other programs stabilize nations and, together with U.S. soft power investments in development and fighting extreme poverty, account for less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

Thanks in large part to U.S. foreign aid, there are one billion fewer people living in extreme poverty today than there were in 1990. Taxpayer support is critical to helping Washington overcome gridlock and partisan politics and do the right thing. Call and write your representatives and ask them to fully support the U.S. foreign aid budget.

Stephen Bunt, Irving

Rejecting the bipartisan solution

Re: “Wake Up, Harris and Walz,” by Gwen McAllen, Letters of August 9.

McAllen says he agrees with Gov. Greg Abbott’s assertion that Tim Walz will be a “rubber stamp” for Kamala Harris’s “deadly open border policies,” and is concerned that Harris and Walz are blind to the danger of terrorists entering the United States.

But Abbott and McAllen seem to forget that Republicans in Congress, in an apparent effort to flatter Donald Trump and preserve a campaign issue, stripped out bipartisan legislation that supporters in both major parties said would give the president the border control tools he needed.

Trump’s sycophants were clearly more eager to win elections than to keep terrorists at bay. And McAllen’s suggestion that Trump could solve the border crisis ignores the fact that he failed to solve it during the four years he had the opportunity to do so.

Ann Ward Purcell, Dallas/Lake Highlands

Column highlights need for immigrants

Re: “The U.S. labor market needs more ‘invaders’ — Put bluntly, the crisis is not one of too many immigrants, but of too few,” by Rob Curran, August 4, Opinion.

Curran’s column was the best articulation of the immigration issue I’ve seen to date. I’ve long argued here, in the letters and on my golf course, that America needs immigrants, and Curran put it logically and succinctly.

The best arguments in support: a lower birth rate than the death rate and the presence of immigrants willing to take on roles that many American citizens will not. Labor shortages will lead to shortages of food, housing, and health care, among other things. Is that what Americans want?

Stop complaining and address and fix the immigration problem. Putting off a bipartisan bill to use it as a weapon in the election campaign was a disgrace.

Gary Tutt, from McKinney

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