The tragic effect of illegal migrants

Re “Ask and deport, family urges,” April 9

This article reports that “City Councilman Ed Reyes said he had great sympathy for the [Shaw] family but believes any changes to Special Order 40 would ‘have unintended consequences.’ ” That is the point -- getting illegal immigrants out of the country. If people are here illegally and committing crimes, then expect to be deported. If you come here, expect to work and assimilate into our society, not the other way around, and we will expect you to abide by our laws.

Bruce Connolly

Santa Maria

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It has become an all-too-familiar scene: crying parents, dying children, hand-wringing police chiefs and politicians. How many more Americans must die in our nation’s streets, murdered by illegal immigrants? If these killings by foreign nationals were happening anywhere else besides poor, minority neighborhoods, this country would be in an uproar. Police officers in many American cities find that their hands are tied because of rules that prohibit them from checking the immigration status of gang members. This allows the criminal behavior of people who have entered this country illegally to flourish. They move with impunity among law-abiding citizens, hoping to go unnoticed as they murder the best and the brightest of our nation’s youth.

The horror of it all is that Jamiel Shaw Sr. was grooming his son to live the American dream, only to have it shattered by someone who should not have been in this country in the first place.

Jerome S. Woolfork

Los Angeles