Evils of labeling others

In the June 25 Daily Herald, several letters back Trump's immigration policies. Some accuse the parents of putting their children in peril by trying to bring them into our country as if it's their own fault. One writer calls them a "plague." To them, I say look into why they left their countries in the first place.

Mexico has a near 50 percent poverty rate and crime stemming from the drug cartels is rising. El Salvador has the highest murder rate in the world and the police there are outnumbered by the gang members two to one. People leaving Central America are not trying to "infest" us, and are not all "murderers and rapists, drug dealers and gang members," as Donald Trump paints them all to be. They are fleeing oppression, poverty and in some cases death threats.

Donald Trump has consistently used labels for groups and ethnicities. When I was a sophomore at the university, a pal and I had to see a movie for a class we were taking. We went there joking and kidding. We walked out in stunned silence, not saying a word to each other. The movie was "Mein Kampf." We saw how Hitler and the Nazis demonized and labeled Jews even using bogus scientific "evidence" to prove their immorality and subhuman intelligence. For them if you saw a Jew you did not see person as a human. You saw them as infestations or members of a race that brought a plague. Sound familiar? I am grateful for seeing that movie because at an early age I learned the evils of labeling and demonizing people. Some people need to learn his lesson starting at the White House.

Lawrence R Kopp

Schaumburg