Immigration solutions

Regarding “Joe Holley: How immigrants could save Texas’ small towns,” ( July 23): Bravo to Joe Holley and the Chronicle for proposing a solution instead of more hand-wringing and head-shaking over Texas immigration! What if some small-town mayors sent buses to the border for immigrants to come to their towns, instead of Gov. Greg Abbott sending busloads of them out of Texas?

Surely a Texas version of the old Homestead Act could be put together, and we could hold our heads a little higher. I taught U.S. and Texas history for 35 years, and I still believe that such things can happen.

Virginia Bernhard, professor emerita,

history, University of St. Thomas

I’ve been touting this concept since we started having issues on the Texas border. Also, while taking road trips to the far reaches of Texas, and seeing dying little rural towns. Thanks to Joe Holley for articulating it so well.

My friend George Archibald is doing this in Baraboo, Wis. He’s taken in an Afghan family of 10 to start a new life in rural Wisconsin. Several folks at Houston’s Christ Church Cathedral visited the border in 2022 and were troubled by what they witnessed. After much research and discussion, they established Casa Mateo on an unused church campus donated by the Episcopal Diocese. It will take in several immigrant families to begin anew sometime next year.

It can be done in Texas! Community gardens need to be established. Abandoned wells need to be capped. Solar and wind power need to be operated and maintained. Public parks need care and attention. Schools and hospitals need energized staff. Old buildings need to be preserved and restored. And so on.

Hooray for Holley for bringing this concept to a larger audience, some of whom just might decide to do what small municipalities in Utah and Iowa are already doing. Ann Hamilton, Houston

I read Joe Holley’s article on immigrants contributing to America with interest. It brought to mind the situation at the border. Call them what you like, people have been crossing our southern border since the end of the Mexican-American War. For nearly 200 years, the flow has been constant; it has peaked and ebbed through the decades but it has never stopped.

In the “good old days” (when America was “great”), migrants were viewed as either a nuisance or a resource to be taken advantage of in the form of cheap labor. Use them and then deport them (see: 1950s, Operation Wetback). Now these migrants are viewed as a danger, an invasion, a threat to the republic. If invasion it be, then this invasion has not prevented this nation from becoming wealthier, stronger and the most powerful nation on Earth. Which raises the intriguing question: Did this nation become as wealthy and powerful as it is in spite of this “invasion” or in part because of it? Gonzalo Martinez, La Porte

Thank you, Joe Holley, for showing us that our immigration problem can be approached intelligently and humanely. While our history contains both good and evil, we can — if we put our fears and ignorance behind us — strive to find solutions that promote and achieve our American values for the good of all men and women, who are created equal.

Christine Eheman, Houston

Regarding “Have we lost our soul as Texans and as Americans? (Opinion),” ( July 21): There was a letter to the editor which defended Gov. Abbott’s buoys and razor wire on our oncebeautiful Rio Grande by saying, “The people of this great state are sick of people pouring into Texas who seem to be looking for all the free stuff.” I see immigrants standing all day in a parking lot in 100-degree heat, just hoping some guy in a pickup will pay them a pittance for cleaning trash off his property. I guess no one told them about the free stuff.

Immigrants who brave heat exhaustion, starvation, sexual assault, razor wire, buoys and Border Patrol officers who are told to push children, babies and pregnant women into the deep water, are not looking for free stuff. They are looking for just the tiniest chance of working hard at the jobs Americans don’t want to do, and eventually making a better life for themselves and their families. Patricia Bernstein, Bellaire