New type of immigration cycle

A reader from Bartlett on July 11 voiced his opinion that we should be mindful that Americans are mostly the product of immigrants and we therefore should freely grant that same privilege to present day immigrants if they meet the criteria of experience, job skills and embrace English as their new lingua franca.

That is a fair expectation for today's newer waves of immigration but we can't over look the fact that a large part of Americans do trace their origins to an immigration era when agriculture ruled the economy and none of the above criteria was necessary for the stoop labor of those bygone days.

In today's immigration cycle we are being besieged by hordes of "immigrants" who illegally cross our borders with poor job and language skills while looking for that same stoop labor of yesteryear that hardly exists in today's world. By the same token today's law abiding immigrants from around the world that do have language and job skills along with new product ideas to grow our economy find themselves obliged to file a lot of paperwork about themselves, including a police report that they don't have a criminal background and a guarantee that they have a sponsor here waiting for them.

They can next expect a wait time of several years or more to be admitted to our shores after filing their request to immigrate. Any immigration reform now being bandied about should be crafted for today's economy and needed skills but not based on the future votes politicians hope to garner for bestowing wholesale amnesty to untold thousands of "undocumented" immigrants who ignored all the legal steps to enter the USA.

Walter Santi

Bloomingdale