Letter to the Editor
This appears in the most recent edition of the San Bernardino County Sun:
There has never been a better time to reform immigration law. The problems we are all facing today are multiplied tenfold for immigrants. When you combine fear of exploitation, deportation or incarceration with poverty, lack of health care and lack of education, you get a hopelessness that resonates beyond the immigrant community and affects us all. We can begin solving problems in California and the U.S. by crushing the "illegal alien" mentality that allows one group of people to make scapegoats out of another.
We all have to stop blaming and pointing fingers and begin embracing one another. Only through a united effort will we pull ourselves out of the pit we have dug for ourselves through ignorance and overindulgence.
It is going to take effort on everyone's part; we need every person to be strong, confident and free of fear, if we expect to emerge a healthy and strong nation.
We need to welcome all hands capable of hard work, we need to protect human rights by forcing employers to pay a living wage to all and end the double standard that makes it OK to ignore the rights and liberties of any person regardless of their status as a citizen. We need to stop blaming our drug crisis on other countries, we need to admit and be proud that we are a multilingual, multicultural nation.
Many of us will need to make hard decisions about raising taxes and stop living like royalty while others struggle to scrape by.
CATHERINE R. SUTTON
Redlands
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