Illegal Immigration Is Local Concern

* Your [editorial] “Day Laborer ‘Sweep’ Cleans Up Nothing” (Oct. 22) is both illogical and wrong-headed and serves only to continue the present unsatisfactory situation regarding control of illegal immigration to this country.

The United States is the only industrialized nation sharing a long, undefended land border with a Third World country, Mexico. We are also the only nation with dozens of international airports and seaports at which tens of thousands of foreign visitors arrive daily. To expect that our borders can be protected by the Border Patrol and immigration agents alone is most unrealistic.

We will only be able to solve this serious problem by government officials and law enforcement agents at all levels together with employers and citizens cooperating to enforce our laws regarding immigration.

You seem to advocate that local police disregard our immigration laws. Would you also suggest that local police should fail to take action when a bank is being robbed because bank robbery is only a federal crime and the local police should not work as agents for the FBI?

This problem will also persist until we adopt and enforce a system of national identity cards as is common in all the Western European nations except the United Kingdom, with the latter being an island nation having a better ability to control its borders.

Please reconsider your attitude on this matter.

MARK A. CARR

San Clemente