Cut the demand for immigrants

Re “Immigration, again,” editorial, April 10

While President Bush’s immigration plan may in some respects be better and more humane than others, that fact merely damns it with faint praise.

One would think we would have learned from the drug trade: One cannot control the supply; one can only control the demand. And the majority of illegal immigrants, unlike drug traffickers, are honest, hardworking individuals simply seeking a better life.

Instead of spending billions of dollars building border barriers that will not work, let’s spend a few hundred million arresting middle-class facilitators of illegal immigration. I don’t think many of them would have to be arrested before the demand for illegal immigrants would dry up -- and demands for a guest worker program soar.

As a side benefit to such an approach, America, for a change, would not be viewed as the schoolyard bully.

MARK DAVIES

Tarrytown, N.Y.