EDITOR:

This is in response to the July 14th letter titled “Understanding Asylum Seekers and Illegal Immigrants” from Teresa Ross. Your July 3rd letter mentioned “refugees” and “immigrant families”, not “asylum seekers”. Your letters tend to be misleading and factually inaccurate. President Trump’s zero tolerance policy targeted, for prosecution, everyone caught entering the U.S. illegally, not just families as your July 3rd letter states. The policy did result in separations, but that is only the most recent, most publicized problem at the southern border.

Your July 14th letter suggests that a lack of understanding is to blame for opinions opposed to your own. I think the illegal aliens understand our asylum laws better than you do. If they aren’t caught they disappear into our country. If they do get caught they just say the magic word “asylum” and trigger a month’s-long legal process that could result in “catch and release” or separating families. Your claim that asylum requests can only be made at a legal port of entry is wrong.

You mention drugs and violence in the Central American countries where most of the illegal aliens are coming from as if that’s reason enough to let them all into the United States. Our asylum laws were meant to apply to religious, ethnic, gender or political persecution by governments. Run-of-the-mill violence, ugly as it is, doesn’t qualify. That’s why around 80 percent of asylum claims from Central Americans are denied. But the magic word gets them in and by the time a claim is denied, the claimant is usually long gone.

You say the U.S. government has committed child abuse and kidnapping. What would you do if it was you sitting in the big chair? Would you detain them as families even though you can’t confirm the identities of the kids or the adults? You’re not allowed to keep the kids longer than 20 days. We know you wouldn’t separate them. Would you then release the family with a court date? What if the adults are actually human traffickers?

Our jumbled, incoherent laws make bad policy inevitable. If Congress would pass real border security laws most of our problems would be gone. Sen. Chuck Schumer says we don’t need a law, the President can fix things with his pen. He’s wrong. If we don’t need a law, we don’t need Chuck. Congress needs to do its job.

You say it’s unfortunate that people want to believe lies without doing research. With that in mind here are some articles that should interest you. These articles have links to other good articles. Just Google the titles.

“4 Things the Media Won’t Tell You About the Border Crisis” (thefederalist.com 6/20/18) “Our Debate on Illegal Immigration is a National Disaster” (thefederalist.com 6/19/18) “Separating Families at the Border” (investors.com 6/18/18) “Illegal Immigrants Use Asylum as their E-Z Pass……” (investors.com 7/4/18) “The Truth About Separating Kids” (nationalreview.com 5/28/18)

Kenneth LaMarche

Escanaba