Advertisement

Gurza on Deaths at U.S.-Mexico Border

Share

While I oppose the shooting of unarmed, fleeing illegal immigrants at the border, Agustin Gurza overlooked some important facts in his Nov. 28 column. The illegal immigrants in question are taking unfair advantage of their proximity to the U.S. to enter the country before other immigrants who wait to enter legally. The illegal immigrant who bled to death was the eldest of 16 children and already a father himself.

I know many people in this country who would love to have more children but do not, because they are responsible enough to realize that they cannot afford to feed, educate and give additional children a quality life. It is unfair of Gurza, the Mexican people and the Mexican government to assume that because the U.S. is a more prosperous nation, it should continue to absorb the excess population that Mexico cannot feed, house, educate and employ.

MICHAEL THOMAS

El Toro

*

In his complaint that the U.S. Border Patrol, by closing off safer access to the U.S. for those who would enter illegally, has needlessly forced people to “march to their deaths in dangerous wilderness crossings,” Gurza has missed the point. It is the sovereign prerogative of any nation to determine who crosses its borders and who does not. The “right of human mobility” does not trump this.

Advertisement

EDWARD REISMAN

Santa Monica

*

Gurza opines that “paupers storm the turrets” of the cruel rich, trying to make Mexican nationals here illegally into some sort of noble peasant army against the elite. Wrong. The people harmed by flooding labor markets with millions of desperate, unskilled workers are America’s own poor--black, white and recent immigrants. Mass immigration creates a redistribution of wealth upward toward the owners of capital. And the rich? They can’t have wages too low or workers too pliant, so excessive immigration is one of their favorite institutions.

BRENDA WALKER

Berkeley

Advertisement