Where was the outrage?

Where was the outrage when families were separated in 2014 under President Obama? Oh that’s right, there was none. It didn’t suit the liberal narrative. Where is the outrage of American families being ripped apart when parents go to jail? Oh, that’s right American citizens don’t count.

I hate to burst that bubble, but coming here illegally is a crime. So liberals want children housed with adults? Or are we supposed to build family housing facilities? No, actually what the left wants is to immediately let anyone with children into the country and give them citizenship. This way they have the new voters they actually seek.

Nancy Pelosi doesn’t give a darn about those children — it’s all about winning in November.

Folks, this isn’t a new issue, do some research and you’ll see. The Democrats had a super majority under Obama, yet they didn’t touch immigration. Why is that? Because they want the issue to run on. They don’t want to fix it.

Mark Elliott

Colorado Springs

No one knows the numbers

I’m perusing the local viewpoints in my Gazette on Tuesday, when I came across some interesting statistics about illegal immigrants and how much they cost Colorado taxpayers annually. Wow! A billion and a half dollars? I had heard that illegal immigrants pay into Social Security using a fake Social Security number, but they don’t qualify to reap the benefits. At that time, in the 1990s, we had a significant sum of money we had collected from these illegal immigrants and that was helping keep the system solvent — well ahead, even. So naturally I had to look this one up.

The viewpoint letter refers to 2013 figures. The only “study” that was published in 2013 was from the FAIR organization, an anti-immigration reform political foundation. It was then repeated by Lou Dobbs and various Fox News folks.

I’m afraid these messengers do not have a good enough track record with facts for my own mind.

The figures from the few studies I found range dramatically. It turns out nobody knows how much immigration costs, or how much we gain, monetarily and otherwise.

Laura Corr

Colorado Springs

Something missing from the story

I don’t understand. It’s illegal to enter our wonderful country on your own without going through proper legal procedures. So the people that are spotlighted in the news who are entering illegally, are criminals. From that, if someone was caught stealing my car and their child is with them, would the child stay with the parent when arrested (answer is no). If I was planning on entering a country legally or not and I knew if I entered they would take my kid, I wouldn’t go into that country! What am I missing?

Doug Higgins

Monument

Separation is enforcing the law

Prisons all over the world are full of criminals who have been separated from their children. People who commit crimes should expect to be imprisoned if caught, but should certainly not expect that their innocent children should be imprisoned with them. Illegal immigrants have broken the law, and they are criminals. Their being separated from their children is their own fault — not the fault of the United States government, which has a legal obligation to enforce the law.

Peter J. Bourgeois

Fountain

A new moral low

Slavery; forced relocation of native populations; Japanese internment camps. My generation hoped that we had moved well beyond these practices that violate the very principles on which this country was founded: the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

What we — as a society — are witnessing today is a new moral low that I had not expected to see in my lifetime:

Children — including babies and toddlers — taken from their parents without explanation, without “due process,” and expected to plead their legal case without representation or parental guidance.

Parents seeking their legitimate right to apply for asylum, who are coaxed to plead guilty to “illegal entry” — a misdemeanor, akin to last week’s speeding ticket — because they fear they otherwise would not get their children back.

Our government has made no apparent provision to establish effective systems to ensure that children and parents are reunited in anything approximating a timely fashion.

Adults, young children, even babies are put in “detention centers” — a euphemism for jails — or tent cities in the summer heat of south Texas. They have no information about their family members and no guidance on how they might be reunited.

Trump says he has no choice — except that it was his administration’s choice, a “zero tolerance policy” announced in April 2018. He blames others for passing a law requiring this — a law that does not exist except in his imagination. Are these children hostages for his “wall”? We can disagree about policies from this administration, whatever our political affiliation. But this should be a moral outrage for all of us.

Where are our political leaders? Our elected representatives? Our faith leaders who exalt “family values” as their mantra? Their silence is deafening.

Schuyler Foerster

Colorado Springs

Impossible to stay unaf fi liated

Forcing unaffiliated voters to choose between two primary ballots effectively forces them to vote a straight political ticket — rather than vote issues and candidates. It’s no better than the old way of barring independent voters from having a true voice in the primaries. How about a color coded primary ballot where people can choose among all the candidates they want to vote for in November? A hearts-and-minds choice over straight ticket force.

Judith Harrington

Palmer Lake

Border immigrants (Getty images)