Dealing with immigration

Re “Crossing a line,” editorial, Feb. 21

If the courts have ruled that immigration is federal territory, therein lies the problem. There are only two viable options in dealing with illegal immigration: either comprehensive immigration reform (code word for amnesty) or denying immigrants access to jobs and nonessential services. States and municipalities have chosen the latter because it appears to be working. The federal government has tried the former, and it has been ineffectual.

David Elbers

Los Angeles

The Times thinks that illegal aliens “contribute to our economy and our society in myriad ways.” Have you ever glanced at the numbers crunched by the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector? He shows that the average household headed by a low-skilled immigrant costs the rest of us, each year, about $19,000. Some “contribution.” Rector notes that an upsurge in the high school dropout rate among our youth would be alarming, but the importation of millions of high school dropouts from abroad is seen, somehow, as an economic boon.

That’s merely economics. More important, the country becomes ever more ungovernable as -- driven by mass immigration -- it Balkanizes along ethnic lines. Here’s what The Times needs to recall: American public policy, including immigration policy, has the sole purpose and justification of benefiting “ourselves and our posterity,” as the Constitution says. Mass immigration benefits us not one whit. It must end. Enforcement of laws against illegal immigration is a baby step toward that goal.

Paul Nachman

Bozeman, Mont.