Letters to the Editor - Cook County

First, dry up the demand for jobs

The problem of illegal immigration is very complex and there is no simple solution. There are three main areas that need to be addressed: 1) secure our borders 2) stop the demand for illegal immigrants, and 3) what to do with those already here.

By far, the most important area is to stop the demand for illegal immigrants. As long as there is a demand for illegal immigrants, they will find a way into our country no matter how much we secure our borders or deport them.

That demand is the promise of jobs. These jobs represent an opportunity for these people to earn some money, which is better than earning nothing back in their homeland. Pay as low as $2 and hour, or $50 per week, or even less, is often much more than they could earn in their home countries.

For the businesses that hire or contract these workers, it is a case of exploiting these people to reduce their labor costs and increase their profits. These businesses break existing laws regarding the payment of minimum wages, the payment of payroll (withholding) taxes, unemployment taxes, workers compensation insurance, etc., and they do not provide any health insurance or pension benefits, leaving all these costs to the taxpayers.

We should hold these businesses accountable for their actions. They should pay all the back taxes owed to the government (especially Social Security and Medicare) and pay fines to offset the health care costs incurred by the illegal immigrants.

Once the demand for illegal immigrants has stopped, then we can focus on securing our borders, and dealing with the illegal immigrants already here. This last issue is the most difficult to address, and should not be our focus until we have eliminated the demand for illegal immigrants.

Klaus Trieb

Hoffman Estates

Modernists have created problems

As a 31-year-old practicing Catholic who attends the Latin Mass some of the time, I am pleased Pope Benedict XVI has loosened its restrictions.

I find it almost humorous that certain critics are concerned the pope's decision is somehow a way to reinterpret Vatican II. Actually, it's the modernists -- not the pope or the assenting Catholics -- who have been "reinterpreting" (read: misrepresenting) the teachings of Vatican II for the last few decades.

Not to mention the post-Vatican II era in the Catholic Church hasn't exactly been rosy. In 2003, researcher Kenneth C. Jones published a collection of statistics which he titled "Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II." Among his findings: While the number of priests in the U.S. more than doubled to 58,000 between 1930 and 1965, since then, that number has fallen to 45,000, and by 2020, there will be only 31,000 priests left. The number of seminarians declined over 90 percent between 1965 and 2002. In 1965, there were 180,000 Catholic nuns, but by 2002, that number had fallen to 75,000.

A 1958 Gallup Poll reported that three in four Catholics attended Mass on Sundays, but a more recent study by the University of Notre Dame found that only one in four now attend. Catholic marriages have fallen in number by one-third since 1965, while the annual number of annulments rose from 338 in 1968 to 50,000 in 2002.

We can thank modernist corruption and the zeitgeist for the aforementioned "fruits," and even for significant aspects of the clergy sex abuse scandal.

Matt C. Abbott

Chicago