In a letter in the April 17 edition of the West Central Tribune entitled "All cultures are not equal," the writer Patricia Carter Harding on immigrants. She claims, "We are giving our country away to the invaders as we wring our hands and wonder what to do"; "...we are becoming a Hispanic Quebec. Barbaric cultures are coming here that have made a vow to murder us."
Do any of us come from an immigrant group about which this was not said? What happened to the country that used to describe itself as "a nation of immigrants"? Who granted the writer the right to pull up the drawbridge after she had safely crossed the moat? Given her indiscriminate hurling of epithets, who is best described as "barbaric"?
Let's get realistic about policy choices. As Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin points out, we need laws that protect our borders but also recognize the presence of 11 million undocumented immigrants and present them with a challenging but possible route to integration (see www.minnesotaforfeingold.org ). In that way, the country benefits as do they, which is how America got built in the first place.
Joel Clemmer
St. Paul
