Letters

Re “New territory,” Opinion, May 7

After I carefully read and then reread Tamar Jacoby’s Op-Ed article regarding immigration reform, I was struck by the manipulation of facts. Among her many misrepresentations, she states that CNN’s Lou Dobbs and former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo “are already ratcheting up their anti-immigrant rhetoric.”

Their rhetoric is not anti-immigrant, but it is anti-illegal immigrant. She casts them as bigots instead of supporters of our laws.

Her essay could make sense to me if she would stop “selling” and start telling things as they are.

Roger Nicholson

Irvine

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Jacoby fails to address the issue honestly.

The No. 1 issue is, was and continues to be that of illegal immigration and the myriad effects that it has on this country.

Instead, Jacoby relies on that tried-and-true tactic of labeling those who are fighting to get a handle on the issue of illegal immigration as being “anti-immigration,” thereby implying racism, bigotry and xenophobia and, in the process, demonizing those who want true immigration reform.

What Jacoby wants is blanket amnesty, open borders and unfettered immigration. The author just won’t come out and say it.

David Brown

Rancho Palos Verdes

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Jacoby repeats the old canard that “they only take work Americans are unwilling to do” when she reports that “not even unemployed Americans seem to want to do farm work or day-labor jobs.”

Does anyone really believe that the many illegals here in Los Angeles County are all picking crops or hanging out at Home Depot?

I do believe this country needs some foreign workers. All I ask is that this number be regulated by the government and that the people who are let in be screened to weed out criminals.

It can’t be that tough.

Greg Daniels

Canyon Country

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I wonder if, besides being the president of ImmigrationWorksUSA, Jacoby also employs illegal immigrants?

However, I do have a question for Jacoby: Do you pick fruit too?

W.V. Watson

Los Angeles

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I find myself angered by the article on amnesty for illegal immigrants; it is a continuing reminder of the frustration I feel at the dishonesty from supporters of amnesty.

The problem for me is that they are never honest about the issue. They never mention the actual reason many Americans do not support amnesty -- lawbreaking.

Instead, it is turned into a question of racism. As in, “If you deny us amnesty, you are a racist.” Or the insulting statement equating amnesty with whether we “like people who look like you.”

This is quite insulting. There are white illegal immigrants.

Supporters of amnesty also are routinely indignant about, and decry, racial profiling when it serves to protect them from law enforcement.

But hypocritically, they support racial profiling by making it a singularly Latino issue, as though no others were a part of the undocumented.

K. Wesley Patten

Los Angeles