League backs fair treatment of immigrants
According to DATA USA, in 2023, more than 12% of Sarasota County residents were born outside of the United States.
Because a significant portion of our county consists of immigrants, the League of Women Voters of Sarasota County would like to share our position on immigration.
We support immigration policies that promote reunification of immediate families; meet the economic, business and employment needs of the United States; and are responsive to those facing political persecution or humanitarian crises.
Qualified people should be able to enter the United States on student visas.
All people should receive fair treatment under the law.
We support federal immigration law that provides an efficient, expeditious system for legal entry of immigrants into the United States.
We support federal policies to improve economies, education, job opportunities and living conditions in nations with large emigrating populations.
In transition to a reformed system, we support provisions for individuals already living in the country without legal permission to earn legal status.
We support due process for all, including the right to a fair hearing, right to counsel, right of appeal and right to humane treatment.
Vilia Johnson and Rhonda Peterson, co-presidents, League of Women Voters of Sarasota County
Federal troops quell unlawful activity
The concept of utilizing federal troops to protect citizenry from unlawful activity is not a new concept. Nor is it to confuse the difference between “protests” and “riots.”
The Whiskey Rebellion was an insurrection, though its participants felt they were simply protesting a tax. President George Washington personally headed the federal troops to quell it.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower dispatched the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that desegregated schools in that district in 1957.
No rioting or destruction of property occurred in Little Rock.
Only the prevention of the segregation order by individuals blocking the entranceway of the schools and the refusal of local and state law enforcement to dispel them.
Congress controls immigration in the United States.
Lawmakers can raise or lower the legal number of immigrants allowed in this country.
They have not altered that number since 1990.
Lee Hoffman, Lakewood Ranch
Fifth column radicalizing young adults
What is happening to our country?
This week it is riots in LA, the purported cause being the deportation of illegal criminal immigrants. Before that it was (and still is) the students at some universities supporting the terrorist organization Hamas.
Why is it that so many of our young people have been duped into supporting these criminals and antisemitic acts? I think we are looking at a very sophisticated form of a “fifth column” that has been growing here right under our noses.
Our adversaries have been supplying a lot of money to not only extreme groups that prey upon minorities but to schools and universities that teach our young adults.
Students have become radicalized and are swayed into being anarchists and antisemites.
Be aware that the country of Qatar has donated billions in the form of gifts and contracts to our schools of higher learning. It would be naïve for you to think that they want nothing in return.
This, I contend, is the seed money to fund the “fifth column” in our country.
Democracies have to be vigilant that they aren’t eroded from the inside out.
Marvin Glusman, Sarasota
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Local League of Women Voters chapter supports due process for immigrants | Letters
Reporting by Sarasota Herald-Tribune / Sarasota Herald-Tribune
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