An Open Letter to Bush on Immigration

Avery Park’s letter accuses the President of allowing an “unarmed enemy” to destroy America’s “old fashioned integrity” (“An Open Letter to Bush on Immigration”-June 22). Branding foreign newcomers as the “enemy” is patently unfair when we look realistically at the issues surrounding immigration. President Bush’s lenient attitude toward border control is a calculated effort to deal with the facts on the ground, not simply granting illegal immigrants an “amnesty” as Park sees it. For example, Bush’s planned guest worker program would provide temporary workers to harvest such seasonal crops as vegetables and fruit, while the home countries of these workers will benefit from their remittances. Furthermore, if anyone is to be dubbed an enemy right now, it should be the U.S. economy itself. U.S. subsidies allow farmers to produce a huge surplus of crops at low subsidized prices, crowding out third world producers of corn, rice, and soybean markets. In addition, U.S. factories that are being outsourced from Mexico to Asia take Mexican jobs with them, thus further straining Mexico’s ability to create the one million new jobs annually which are badly needed. It’s contradictory to accuse immigrants with destroying our home, when we contributed to the destruction of theirs in the first place. Mr. Park would be wise consider the circumstances that bring immigrants to our country before demanding their unrealistic removal.