Letter: Letter writer got many of his border facts wrong

Editor,

In a letter to the editor published on Wednesday, Feb. 20, Ed Hickey made a few statements that I feel I must respond to.

First, Mr. Hickey asks, “Why does our president have to fight our Congress for the border security and safety of our own country?”

If this was a real high priority problem, why didn’t the president push for this wall when the Republicans controlled both the House and Senate? It must not be an emergency if you can do nothing about it for two full years. It is more like his promise to invest a lot in infrastructure, which the president continues to do nothing about.

Next, he wrote, “Without borders we are not a sovereign country but just a land mass …”

We have been fairly well recognized as a sovereign country for over 240 years. There are very few countries in this world that feel they need a wall to keep people from crossing their border.

Two notable exceptions to that were East Germany and North Korea. In both of those cases, the real reason for the wall was to keep their citizens in, much more so than to keep foreigners out.

He goes on to say, “Democrat leaders vehemently oppose a border barrier that would stop much of the illegal inflow of people, drugs, human trafficking, criminals and gang members.”

The truth is that most of the drugs coming across our border come through the legal ports of entry. It would seem that if the goal was to reduce drugs, it would be much more effective, and lower cost, to invest in technology to detect drugs coming through the ports of entry.

Democrats have not been opposed to increasing security at our border, they are opposed to building a wall that will do more harm than good.

Hickey further stated, “They advertise their compassion and feelings for those illegals who seek a better life, and bestow upon them, after entering, more benefits and free stuff than ordinary American citizens receive.”

That is simply not true. Those who are here illegally are not eligible for welfare. Many of those who cross our border are not illegal. They are seeking asylum. That is not illegal.

He also wrote, “Not one of the Democrat leaders has even visited the southern border to see for themselves the problems a barrier would resolve, but the president has …”

Again, that is simply not true. Many Democrat leaders have visited the border, and the detention facilities that treat asylum seekers like criminals, and separate children from their parents, without records to reunite those families.

Apparently, the horrible foreigners now are those people from Mexico and Central America. They replace the hated immigrants of the past, including those from Ireland, Poland, China, etc.

All those groups have been assimilated into the U.S. and they all contribute more to the U.S. than they get.

Norm Samuelson

Oak Harbor