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July 30, 2024
Editor, The News-Gazette: If you live in the United States, and are not a full-blooded Native American, you come from immigrant stock. Your ancestors and mine came here, willing to risk all, even death, for a better way of life. Those early immigrants created the foundation of the United States of America. Others followed, and our country grew into a world power.
But both parties agree that our immigration system needs fixing. In 2020, when President Biden tried a more open-door, humane policy, the pandemic was in full fury, to be followed by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The damaging results of these major events on the world are easy to see in hindsight, and President Biden’s administration pushed for an already informally agreed upon, bipartisan bill to turn things around at the southern border, but was thwarted by right wing opposition. So the hell at the border continues today on a scale we, in our comfortable lives, simply cannot imagine.
These folks can’t go home again. Death, imprisonment, starvation and torture await – just what our forebears in Rockbridge would have faced had they returned to Europe.
Plus, all the horrors the far right attributes to immigrants are happening right here in Rockbridge County. A recent list of local grand jury indictments included sexual battery, indecent liberties with a child, object sexual penetration, strangulation, malicious wounding, child endangerment, felony embezzlement, fraudulently obtaining welfare assistance, and, among others, “possession of a schedule I or II drug,” fentanyl and methamphetamine.
We have a dearth of workers in the U.S., and Rockbridge isn’t exempt. A business had to close recently, the day after it opened, due to a to “shortage of workers.” Plumbers, electricians, HVAC people here complain of the difficulty finding help.
We need to clear the way for qualified immigrants to get working and making safe lives for their families. It’s the right thing to do. SARAH CLAYTON Rockbridge County
