Banner should broadcast both sides of immigration debate
I am the former acting executive director of the Massachusetts Citizens for Immigration Reform. My father was white and from what Oliver Wendell Holmes refers to as a “Boston Brahmin” background, and my mother was from the Caribbean and is part black and East Indian. While I was an infant, in fact, I was physically lifted off the ground and rocked in the arms of a friend of my godmother, Dr. W.E.B. DuBois.
Your article on immigration (“Congress fails local activists on immigration reform,” July 5, 2007) oversimplifies the problem, and it has more comments from people who favor the legalization. To some, your preference for their comments implies your own support for the position. You should try harder to get balanced and better-informed commentary.
The presence of illegal aliens has the worst impact on the blacks and other legal minority members who compete against them for the same jobs. There are efforts by private citizens and government to make up for historic neglect of the condition of minority members. Legalization would make the illegal aliens also eligible for any such affirmative action.
If any people desire to assist others they feel close to in another country, then it should not be by violating American citizens’ rights. Instead, it should be through assisting them there, just as I have. A nation’s immigration policy is supposed to optimize conditions for its citizens — not, in America’s case, those billions who wish they were born here instead.
Richard Bond
Via e-mail
