They deserve better

As reprehensible lies are being spread about the Baltimore bridge collapse by folks like Fox’s Maria Bartiroma speaking with Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who both attempted to link the collapse to “Biden’s failed immigration policy,” we now know that eight immigrants, some of them undocumented, were “doing backbreaking work at a wretched hour” that night, as described by columnist Will Bunch, “so their neighbors could drive safely to their warm, comfortable office cubicles in the dawn’s early light.” Six tragically lost their lives. These men were working to provide for their families. They were not swallowing up U.S. taxpayer resources. They were not sex traffickers or fentanyl dealers or “animals” or “poisoning our blood,” as a certain former president claims of immigrants.

I grieve for them and their families. They deserve better than politicians and pundits spewing garbage.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the recent surge in immigration of working-age populations will increase our U.S. gross domestic product about $7 trillion over the 10 years from 2023 to 2034. $7 trillion! That’s a bad thing?

Ronald Reagan once praised and welcomed immigrants, saying, “We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people— our strength—from every country.” He added that they “renew and enrich our nation.” Our state’s majority politicians could learn from that. Sadly, too many of them prefer to rant performatively about open borders while refusing to pass meaningful bipartisan immigration reforms so that Donald Trump can keep immigration as an active campaign issue.

Many immigrants who work on our farms, in construction, in manufacturing, in lawn care, in restaurant kitchens, in all levels of health care and elsewhere provide Arkansans with a better life. Our world is, indeed, enriched by their presence. Why not welcome them?

MARY REMMEL WOHLLEB Little Rock