Vicente Fox, Immigration and Opportunity

Re “California Shouldn’t Fear Fox’s Mexico,” March 25:

In order to justify the main thesis in the headline, Dana Parsons refers to an opinion of “an expert witness--Frank D. Bean, director of the Center for Research on Immigration, Population and Public Policy at UC Irvine.” After introducing the center as nonpartisan, he quotes Bean saying that “he expects the Latin immigration of this generation to resemble the pattern of Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries.”

Unfortunately, Californians have some good reasons to fear Fox’s calls for “open borders,” and Bean’s opinion that the current wave of Mexican immigration is not different from the past waves seems to contradict not only what one can see but also what other experts are saying.

For instance, Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington has written, “Mexican immigration poses challenges to our policies and to our identity in a way nothing else has in the past.”

Concerns of a similar nature regarding Mexican immigration were expressed by Robert J. Samuelson, who has written that many Mexican immigrants have little desire to join the American mainstream precisely because their overriding motive for coming was economic and their homeland is so close.

Whatever one’s position regarding issues related to immigration from Mexico and Fox’s role in it, one can probably find an “expert” who will support it.

However, quoting Bean while ignoring dissenting opinions of renowned experts does not seem to contribute to Parsons’ credibility or to the credibility of The Times.

DR. MAREK A. SUCHENEK

Redondo Beach

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Re “State’s Latinos Cheer Fox,” March 23:

President Fox does not govern U.S. citizens, not even those who are natives of Mexico, or their children and grandchildren. It is one thing to praise Latinos who are citizens of the United States and California but quite another to claim them as his constituents. Those people have made individual choices to live here, work here, pay taxes here and enjoy the many privileges of citizenship.

If Fox wants to serve the 100 million who are his real constituents, let him set about providing opportunities that will make it unnecessary for his people to leave Mexico to make a living, go to school or have access to health and social benefits.

BARKLEY B. YARBOROUGH

Huntington Beach