Responding to Bill Slavick’s op-ed of Sept. 2-3, “Immigration: bad law or good sense?,” his account of our immigration policies is based on illogical emotion and misinformation designed to fuel ignorance of our current peril.

Slavick [a member of the Maine Fair Trade Coalition and an independent candidate for the U.S. Senate] calls the Irish, Italian and central European immigrations a trickle and says that eventually only English and Germans were welcome. According the to Immigration Act of 1924-1965, 150,000 immigrants were allowed from all Europe. Based on the 1890 census, a quota of 2 percent of each national group at that time was allowed to enter and above that total, free immigration was allowed from Canada and Latin America. (Professor Robert Kelley, University of California Santa Barbara, “The

Shaping of the American Past,” vol. 2.)

Illegal aliens are draining our Social Security system, not helping it. Fraud is the name of the game. Illegal aliens pay criminals to manufacture fraudulent green cards, Social Security cards or they simply steal someone else’s. Sen. Ensign, R-Nev., stated before the full Senate that 219 illegal aliens were using the social security number of one of his constituents. Are these the people who are supposed to save Social Security for the retiring baby boomers?

President Reagan already set a plan in place to do just that in 1983. New payroll and social security tax revenue were to go into the trust fund and be saved to meet increasing demands for future retirees. But our Congress started raiding these funds for pork projects. So far Congress has spent $1.9 trillion of our Social Security trust fund money.

The answer to this problem is not to have more raiders such as illegal aliens, but to see that HR 219, the Social Security Preservation Act, is passed. It would require 100 percent of our trust fund money be saved. This would ensure benefits for decades to come without cutting benefits, raising taxes, or importing more foreign workers.

According to Slavick, we also need to accept illegal aliens because NAFTA ruined a million Mexican farmers. NAFTA also ruined a lot of American lives. What border do our out-of-work people have to cross to gain a job? Slavick mentions the corruption in the Mexican government, but ours is corrupt also. Are we obligated to take in all

who are dissatisfied where they are?

The United States is the most generous country in the world, and even under the old immigration law of 1924, we legally admitted more people than the rest of the world combined. The 1965 immigration law instituted a simple ceiling of 290,000 immigrants per year from anywhere; it never meant to remotely approach the numbers we are admitting today, and it never meant to accept illegal entrants.

Today we have anywhere from 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in our country and 1 million to 3 million a year continuing to cross our porous borders. The number of legal entrants is about 1 million yearly, overwhelming numbers, destined to do irreparable harm to our country.

Individuals and political, social, civil and religious organizations, which aid and abet illegal aliens, are breaking the law under the 1996 immigration reform act. Declared sanctuaries, such as LA, San Francisco, Chicago and the whole state of Maine, are breaking the law. Jesus said to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and Peter and Paul essentially, said to obey the civil law. Elvira Arellano, a Mexican woman, and her son, being harbored in a United Methodist church in Chicago, is evading U.S. immigration authorities illegally. She is a fugitive. Breaking the law is commonplace to her.

She entered our country illegally, a misdemeanor. She was deported, reentered illegally (which is a felony), worked under a false Social Security number, and had a child who was declared a U.S. citizen under a misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment states that one must be under U.S. jurisdiction for offspring born on U.S. soil to be a citizen. That excludes the children of foreign diplomats residing legally in the United States and most certainly would exclude the children of illegal felons. When do we stop saying it’s OK to flout and disobey our laws? Our government is as bad because it has the responsibility to do its duty and has not.

Fences make good neighbors; Latin America, Mexico and Brazil in particular have not been good neighbors. Mexico is invading us with illegal aliens, drugs, crime, diseases and poverty. Is it our fault that many Latin American countries have extremely high birth rates and cannot support the offspring? It’s time they got practical and solved their own problems. We have enough of our own.

Mr. Slavick, you say we should be decent, good neighbors. We have been. Now it’s up to other countries to be the same.

Ken Roy, of Center Lovell, is a member of Mainers for Sensible Immigration Policy.