Sleight of hand

The Republicans have once again succeeded in choosing a divisive, ugly issue to hump during the election cycle. Last time it was gay marriage. This time it's immigration.

There are no doubt problems with immigration in this country. Lots of folks make it here illegally and stay. But the GOP both on the national and state level are using immigration to divide us once again. The Minutemen want to stand at post along the fenceline to shoot anything that moves. There's talk of building a big, Great Wall style edifice at our border with Mexico.

And if you don't buy into this mantra, you're an unpatriotic stooge who hates your country:

In regard to the clueless people, their liberal attitudes and their disrespect towards the Americans who adhere to our nation's laws, what part of illegal don't you understand?

America is a land of immigrants, legal immigrants. Illegal immigrants should be required to go through the normal processes to become a legal citizen. For illegal immigrants to want an exception to the rules and laws would be a slap in the face to those who followed the normal immigration procedures. I always welcome people who are willing to follow the laws of the society and not expect special treatment.

Who do you think took the supposedly "unwanted jobs" before the illegal immigrants were here? As with anyone in a job, "if you don't like it, don't let the door hit you in the back end on the way out!"

If in fact we are created equal, why do we have "affirmative action" that gives groups of people preference over others only because of who they are, and not what they know?

We have laws for the good of our society. How about, instead of trying to sidestep the laws and procedures, we just follow them for a peaceful, functional world.

-- Edward Stuckart, Stayton

My liberal attitude not withstanding, I'm curious as to why Mr. Stuckart doesn't address the people that hire illegal immigrants (and why laws against employing them aren't enforced) or why we have "affirmative action" in the first place. Why aren't folks like Stuckart demanding that laws against employment of illegals be enforced?

I find his conservative attitude not only dissrespectful and smacking of racism, but unjust and ugly in its tone.

And while we're on the topic of "clueless", exactly how are the laws felonizing illegal immigrants going to solve the problem? Is Mr. Stuckart planning to raise my taxes to allow law enforcement to pursue and incarcerate the 20 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States?

While Stuckart and the Republican Party beat the drum against illegals, the nation suffers from other problems with a much more pressing urgency.

But just like the gay marriage issue, those who seek to continually divide us and hide behind a veil of trumped up BS will work to draw attention away from the real issues at hand: massive corruption, out of control debt, a foreign policy that continues to erode our allies and a war that the vast majority of Americans disagree with and want out of.

But hey..why address the very real and serious problems when you can trump up something like immigration and pretend its what really matters? This sleight of hand worked last cycle. And Republicans are nothing if not consistent when it comes to using old tricks.