UCI Medical Center’s Losses and the Health Care Crisis

Mrs. M.B. Collins’ response (May 14) to The Times’ article on the plight of the UCI Medical Cener, reserving “sympathy for those who are here legally and are paying their way,” is interesting; naive and hateful might be more accurate and descriptive.

Unless Mrs. Collins’ forefathers were American Indian, I must assume that at some time in history they immigrated to the United States. Was it to escape the poverty of the Irish potato famine? The pogroms of Easter Europe? Maybe, the Turkish-Armenian holocaust; or, if as 17th-Century Pilgrim settlers, to escape religious persecution in England. Were they invited to this country by similarly sympathetic “self-supporting taxpayers?”

I recently visited the Statue of Liberty, that grand welcoming beacon to the hopeful immigrant. Emma Lazurus’ heart-rending poem inscribed on its base--”Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free” still echoes in my mind.

Maybe, Mrs. Collins, you should pay a visit.

ELLIOTT C. MERCER

Corona del Mar