Controlling U.S. Borders

I still can’t understand why opponents of my proposals to regain control over our borders and bring our citizenship laws into line with those of the vast majority of nations around the world refuse to base their arguments on the facts.

Instead, Linda Mitchell of the Coalition for Humane, Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles and others cited in The Times’ article of Nov. 28 are trying to twist my views in an apparent effort to make me appear to be anti-Latino.

As I have consistently tried to make clear, my proposals deal only with the issue of illegal immigration. I support our nation’s general legal immigration process, under which the United States each year accepts more immigrants than all the other nations of the world combined. And as Mitchell and others must be aware, the majority of those immigrants during the past quarter-century have been from Latin America and Asia.

But unlike Mitchell, I believe America does have a right to set limits on the number of immigrants, and that we have a right and a responsibility to control our borders. If my opponents believe we should have an open-border policy that’s their right; they should, however, be more upfront about it.

In addition, I’d like to correct one erroneous statement in Jack Cheevers’ otherwise fine article. The total cost to the taxpayer for services rendered to illegal aliens exceeds $5 billion annually. Citizen children in L.A. County alone receive some $250 million a year in welfare payments--a figure expected to reach $1 billion by the end of the decade.

ELTON GALLEGLY. Gallegly, a Republican, represents northwestern Los Angeles County and southern Ventura County in the U.S. House of Representatives .