Police Have Role in Illegal Immigration
* Re “A Federal Responsibility--Period,” editorial, Feb. 13: The Times argues that our local police have no role in immigration law enforcement. In the 1998 Vasquez case, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a lower court decision that there was a “preexisting general authority of state or local police officers to investigate and make arrests for violations of federal law, including immigration laws.”
Under Section 133 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, Congress sought to formalize cooperation between local law enforcement and the INS. Only a recalcitrant Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, who resisted the publication of regulations to allow implementation, kept Americans from benefiting from this act of Congress.
There may be more than 10 million illegal aliens in the United States. Unless we are prepared to face the consequences of a permanent proletariat servant underclass (there will be no amnesty) we must enforce our immigration laws.
GLENN SPENCER
Voice of Citizens Together
Sherman Oaks
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Besides immigration laws, are there any other federal statutes where The Times actively promotes noncompliance? I believe the bulk of our civil rights laws are federal, yet are often enforced with local law enforcement. Freedom of assembly comes to mind.
Calling immigration law enforcement racial profiling smacks of ethnic pandering and worse, playing the race card. More disturbing, a newspaper that so vigorously questioned our attorney general’s ability to uphold the law now editorially calls for public unlawfulness. If The Times wants unrestricted immigration, then it should appeal for changing our nation’s immigration laws, not subverting existing law. The barrier between police and minority residents is the barrier of applying the law equally to, and for, everyone. As a nation of laws and not men, no one should ask local police to ignore those laws deemed politically incorrect.
KEVIN BURKE
Los Angeles
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Paul Donnelly (“Make a Green Card the Real Payoff for Guest Workers,” Commentary, Feb. 12) would like to see more advantages for long-term guest workers, many of whom become permanent. This does seem fair to those workers.
I would like to see some fairness to the citizens of the country as well. The problems of major portions of the population speaking only a foreign language are well known to Canada and at the Tower of Babel. I don’t know how the language requirement for citizenship was so quietly dropped, but my feeling is that anyone not willing to learn the language of the land does not deserve the land. Long-term workers learning the language should also be given priority in green card status. Is there any particular disadvantage to having the country composed of people who are English literate?
JOHN BARTLETT
South Pasadena