RESPONSE: Immigration reform takes leadership

According to the American Immigration Council (non-partisan) and the Cato Institute (conservative), over 80% of the people arrested for smuggling Fentanyl at the border are Americans not illegal immigrants. Americans! Most Fentanyl is smuggled at legal points of entry in passenger vehicles! Mr. Marvin George Miller, were you aware of the facts?

The illegals that concern you were invited as participants in the Bracero Program starting in 1942. This government program formalized immigration from Mexico to do back breaking farm work Americans didn’t want to do. Need proof? In 1965 Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz started the “A Team.” Of the 18K students recruited for farm labor only 2,000 started work. They worked before sun up until after sun down six days a week (like migrant workers). They lived in ramshackle housing for terrible wages. Hundreds just stopped coming to work. Some staged strikes, because American workers wouldn’t accept those conditions. The program was considered a complete failure. Carter, one of the “A Team” said, “There is nothing you can say to us (like migrants are rapists or lazy), we know the work they do.” 

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R) from Texas sponsored the bipartisan immigration bill President Biden wanted to sign and Democrats supported. Congressman Gonzales went on Firing Line and spoke about the bills merits including funding for judges, border security, drones and sending illegals to their country of origin. He supported this bill until Trump said to kill it and tens of thousands more illegals arrived, just as Trump planned. 

Immigration reform takes leadership, not thugs. And please, Mr. Miller, read the Fifth Amendment because Americans can’t pick and choose laws to follow.

BARBARA OSTIPWKO

Coeur d’Alene