MAILBAG:

When Rep. Dana Rohrabacher has achieved anything more noteworthy to his credit than backroom political deals, he can then attack one of the richest and most successful American businessmen on the planet.

Anti-immigration pundits like Rohrabacher and the entire FAIR lineup, with Lou Dobbs leading the attack, have made the immigration question an egregious political toxic wasteland. By blurring undocumented labor from Mexico with all immigration, they are placing the economy and nation at risk.

Bill Gates has it right. He’s not going to Washington, D.C. for the Microsoft Corporation or to make more money for the Gates Foundation. He knows firsthand that one reason this nation remains great and powerful has been the contributions made by many gifted and ambitious foreign nationals who have settled here.

When I inform local business leaders, executives and employers of their poor chances for receiving a critical H-1B visa in the April lottery for a crucial new-hire, foreign-born worker, often a graduate of an American university, they are truly dumbfounded.

Last year, about 120,000 visa applications were filed by American business for 65,000 working visas. What nation selects the best and brightest workers in the world for admission to work within their borders by a game of chance? Certainly not a well-governed nation.

BILL BENNETT

Newport Beach