Thai Workers

Thank you, Julie Su (and the Skadden Fellowship you’re working with), for making it possible to be proud of at least some people in the sorry El Monte sweatshop scandal (Sept. 4). When they had been saved from sweatshop slavery, only to face INS incarceration, thank you for working so hard to give these poor working women some of the freedom for which our country stands.

And thank you too for returning some of the Thai-style hospitality to those workers. It’s the same kind of hospitality many of us received as GIs in northeastern Thailand during the Vietnam War era. And my wife and I have received it each time we’ve returned to Thailand. It’s great that we are able to dwell on that hospitality--both Julie Su’s and our friends’ in Thailand--rather than the greed of the Thai sweatshop gangsters and the bureaucratically small-minded who might have kept those women locked up until they were deported. Set them free--they’ve earned at least that much.

STEVE JORGENSEN

Dana Point

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* Unlike African slaves who were brought to this country in chains and against their will in the holds of overcrowded ships, the “freed” Thai workers came here aboard jetliners, having conspired with their smugglers to violate the immigration laws of the United States. They came expecting heaven but found hell instead. Does that make their lawbreaking any more acceptable or heroic?

ARMIDA T. BOLTON

Los Angeles