All peoples of the Western Hemisphere are children of immigrants, yet the hatred of immigrants has always been a part of America’s history. No retelling of the facts will change the reality that we all began somewhere else.
The Irish were intensely hated when they began arriving during the potato famine of 1845. Signs said “No Irish need apply,” and they were forced to live in tenements and work at jobs manipulated by political hacks.
The Irish were considered dirty Catholics and disease carriers. So were Eastern Europeans, who arrived in mass numbers from 1880 to 1924. The Chinese, sent west to build our railroads, were denigrated as yellow mongrels.
In recent years, the number of Latinos entering the U.S. has caused rage among those who fear loss of a white majority. The Black community has been disparaged by ensuring their inability to create wealth through discriminatory policies in education, banking and taxes.
America’s history of irreconcilable conflicts between the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the hatred and atrocities against so many praying for the goodness of American exceptionalism needs to be recognized by all leaders of good faith.
Ed Horn, Delray Beach
About refugee quotas
Thank you (“Trump’s racist and cruel refugee quotas reject America’s spirit,” editorial, Nov. 13).
As first generation, all of my family is the product of economic refugees from Vietnam or the UK post-World War II devastation, or post- India-Pakistan separation in 1947, or simply transitory immigration. So thank you for shining the spotlight on the cruelty of the current policy, as we see so many political refugees denied passage or deported.
Mike Ryan, Sunrise
The writer is mayor of Sunrise.
Condo musical chairs
Our governor and Legislature have only a limited sense of the consequences of their actions.
Living in a condo is like a game of musical chairs. If one is lucky enough to move out before the bill comes due for repairs from damage that occurred before one thought of buying, which are “fixed” by special assessments that are more than most affected can reasonably pay, the music stops, and your chair was taken by someone else.
The failure of Champlain Towers South, with the resultant efforts by the Legislature to fix the problem, lack of maintenance, is the starkest example I can think of. A building collapsed, tragically, leaving not only families and friends of those who died to suffer, but also those who lived and watched bulldozers reduce the remains of the building to rubble, leaving many survivors penniless.
This is rich-man logic. Rather than provide for obviously needed state aid, which is how thoughtful people would have approached it, as with hurricane damage relief, it ultimately became the problem of older residents, many likely living on fixed incomes, who were left to pick up the costs of the failure of those who lived there before. What will it take for our state government to take another look at this issue?
Michael Peskoe, Fort Lauderdale
Breaking their oaths
Six of the nine Supreme Court justices have ties to the Federalist Society.
A core belief of this group is that the court’s role is to interpret the law as written, not to create new law. We have already witnessed these justices break their oaths to uphold the law and abandon their Federalist beliefs not to create new law.
Does anybody really expect them to rule against this administration? No action is illegal unless they say it is.
Richard Carlson, Deerfield Beach
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