If you don’t like the message, trash the messenger. Jane Livingston’s personal attack in response to my recent letter describing the effects of mass immigration is a classic example of that approach. Ignorant of my past involvement in organization such as Amnesty International, The Hunger Project, Zero Population Growth, and Oxfam America, and unaware of the fact that three of my five in-laws are Hispanic immigrants (one a founding member of the Colorado Coalition for Immigration Reform), Ms. Livingston charges that I oppose mass immigration simply because I am a racist.

Ms. Livingston is wrong. My opposition to mass immigration results from a sober examination of the facts, and those facts lead to the inescapable conclusion that our well intentioned mass immigration policy has harmed at least as many people as it has helped. It is especially destructive to ethnic minorities.

I am not alone in this conclusion. For example, consider the late Rep. Barbara Jordan. Ms. Jordan, the first African-American congress woman from Texas and recipient of both the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights and the National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award, was chosen by President Clinton to head a commission to review US immigration policy. After five years of study, her commission recommended that immigration levels should be cut in half. Was Barbara Jordan a racist? How about Father Theodore Hessburgh? A charter member of the US Civil Rights Commission, he headed another presidential commission studying immigration policy. His report recommended cutting immigration to one third of today’s level. Or how about Senator Gaylord Nelson, father of Earth Day, or President Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development, both of whom recommended reduced immigration. In the 1950’s words like “pinko” and “commie” stifled public debate of Medicare and Medicaid. Today, accusations of racism stifle public debate of immigration policy.

For those who are curious about what lead these distinguished Americans to question the wisdom of our present mass immigration policy, I encourage you to examine the facts for yourselves. The Jordan Commission report is online at www.utexas.edu/lbj/uscir, and portions of the Hessburgh Commission report are available at the University of Maine library. The Census Bureau has numerous publications at its website. I am available at jonette@acadia.net.

Jonette Christian

Holden