TODAY’S BIBLE VERSE

Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music. Psalm 98:4

Migrant numbers = crisis

A Jan. 10 editorial (”Trump’s border claims once again overplay his hand on immigration”) tries to persuade the reader that we don’t have a crisis on our border with Mexico. It states that we have dealt with far greater problems in the past, and it cites the Vietnamese refugee “influx” caused by the fall of Saigon in 1975, and the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.

The facts simply don’t support that theory. In the spring of 1975, some 125,000 refugees departed Vietnam, most of whom passed through various countries seeking eventual refuge in the United States. From 1980-1999 some 473,000 Vietnamese were accepted into the U.S. an average of more than 23,000 per year. From Ethiopia we have accepted approximately 52,000 refugees in the years 1980-1999 (source: Department of Homeland Security). This averages approximately 2,600 per year.

In contrast, during the year 2018, approximately 400,000 illegal immigrants

LETTERS

Email letters to letters@commercial appeal.com; mail Letters to the Editor, The Commercial Appeal, 495 Union, Memphis, TN 38103; or click on the “Submit Letter” link on the Opinion page atcommercialappeal.com. were apprehended along our southwestern border. In the single month of November 2018 approximately 52,000 were apprehended. You should note that the Refugee Act of 1980 passed by the U.S. Congress allows a maximum of 50,000 refugees per year. Although this Act has been “tweaked” since then to provide for comfort and care of the detainees, the maximum allowable figure is unchanged. If 400,000 illegal immigrants were detained in 2018, I wonder how many weren’t. Clearly this overloads our enforcement system, and it’s terribly unfair to the thousands of prospective immigrants who choose to gain legal acceptance. If this is not a crisis, what is?

Barney Hitt, Drummonds