Letters

May I begin by saying that my response to yet another column by Carlos Sandoval [“For Whom the Bell Tolls,” Vistas, Opinion, November 28] is not meant as a personal attack but as a reaction to the platform this paper gives to its liberal columnists and the lack of same to those of us who would enjoy an alternative point of view.

So, Mr. Sandoval: You begin with the liberal media’s delusional obsession with a Donald Trump dictatorship and his campaign promise to return countless illegal border crashers to their former countries. The nation made its choice in our recent election, and it overwhelmingly wants an end to the absorption of millions of uninvited peoples from everywhere on God’s green earth. This mandate is by and large not driven by racism but by patriotism.

Yes, it is patriotic to be proud of our nation and its laws. It is patriotic to invoke the norm of an orderly immigration system designed to benefit the citizens of this land, not primarily to serve political or criminal interests. The election ratified the national desire for reset of this renegade policy and the prosecution of those who have abused the generosity and decency of the American people.

Americans did not sign off on welcoming criminals and rapists emptied from the jails of South America and Central America. They did not endorse the insertion of foreign terrorists, human traffickers or Chinese nationals by the thousands.

I’m sure you don’t want these people here either, Mr. Sandoval. Your concern over your Latino brethren is noble. But the truth is, there will be a serious effort to collect illegals who are all of the above. There will be an enforcement of existing law that has been ignored by the Biden administration. Illegals who have had their day in front of a judge and had their asylum claim rejected will be collected and deported.

This is how a nation of laws must behave if its law will have any meaning.

Will there be heartbreak for families who took the risk and gamble to come here illegally? Yes. If you want to blame and criticize someone for the suffering to come, look to the current administration, who paralyzed the apparatus designed to deal with an orderly immigration process and in doing so encouraged many more to tempt fate.

Do not waste your breath demonizing Trump or the many Americans who tried to get this river of human misery to stop. They knew this was a tragedy in the making. Focus instead on your fellow progressives who did nothing to stop it.

Ed Surgan

Westhampton