The webmaster is way off base this time. At a time when foreign aid is held at an all time low, the webmaster is encouraging anincrease in foreign aid. The immigrants came here with no money. Why not let them leave with no money; unless they do as yours and my ancestors did, “Work like slaves to earn there own keep.” None of our ancestors who came here in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries left with unearned cash. Neither should these modern day misfits from abroad. America is a melting pot. It takes money to fill the melting pot. Most of all, It takes lots of hard work and sacrifice to make gold from the melting pot. That is the first thing our ancestors learned when they first set foot on this land. The Pilgrim Fathers first searched for suitable land to farm. There was none on Cape Cod where they landed. After suitable land was found inland, they put in a crop. After the crop was harvested, they celebrated with the first Thanksgiving giving appropriate thanks to their God for His help. So we celebrate Thanksgiving Day every year in November to thank the Lord for our past year’s successes and even failures in some cases. It is definitely not appropriate to send the illegals home with money in their pockets before they are given the chance to “bust their guts” with hard work. Of course, the criminals, who won’t work anyway and never have, should be just sent to wherever they came and let the institutions where they became criminal deal with them. Boy! If only I was President, the world’s problems would be so simple to solve’ but I bet Donald Trump once made that statement himself. Now that he finds himself in the office, he has found that it is not quite so simple a matter to solve. Why? Because there is always opposition forces. There is always the Nancy Pelozi’s, the Cortezes, and other idiot democrats who think that they know everything, even more than you and me and good hearted, warm bloodied Americans in general. I say, let’s get back to democratic rule. If the American people vote to bring in more foreign immigrants, then, by all means, bring in as many as possible legally, honestly, and give each of them an opportunity to excel. This is what is imprinted on Miss Liberty in New York Harbor. If they are convicted criminals when they get here, then turn them away. Send them to wherever they came. If they murder an American while they are here, then to the gallows they should go. Oh, what a simple world this would be if I only had the power of the President; but, then, I am forgetting the opposition across Pennsylvania Avenue in the House of Representatives. There’s always opposition to everything, rather bad or good. But must we go back to doing as the British are so good at, just muddling through, doing more of the same. Can’t we do the right thing just this once, and that is not throwing wide our borders and letting just anyone come in who wants to. Immigration is necessary; but, at least, let’s do the right thing and control it for the sake of the integrity of our nation.

Our country’s need for immigrants has never been a reason for letting them into the country, not in the old days when the Bonners’, Harpers’, and Hesters’ were setting sail for America. They were let in then only because they were there, and they needed an opportunity, and they were willing to break themselves loose from their old home and venture to an unknown, strange land in search of plentiful, rich, new farmland that was available for the taking. Eventually controls had to be placed on this kind of immigration; else the country would have been over run as it stands in grave danger of being so done today. Your ancestors came successfully. My ancestors on both sides of my family also came. I am happy that they did because I wouldn’t want to be a Frenchman today, even if my Great, Great, Great Grandfather was a member of Emperor Charlemagne’s Court. Even as a member of that great emperor’s court, I bet he didn’t have near the benefits and privileges I do as a natural born American citizen, even though they probably were significant for his day.

21st century immigrants want to come to this country because they see across the sea (or to the north) plentiful jobs available for the taking. They see opportunity where there are very few in their home countries. This is the reason Marina and all her family came, first to Canada, then to America in the 20th century. Marina gradurated from nursing school in Manila when there were greater than 10 graduates available for every available opening in the nursing field. In contrast, the field in America was wide open. All areas of the country were crying for nurses. The same is true of the engineering field. Marina was fortunate in that her older brother had already immigrated to Canada where he had established himself in engineering, so she had a ready made conduit through Michigan to Eutaw, Alabama where I met her. She never really ever had to leave home. She only left the country where she was born, which she could return for many, many visits later. She still misses Ambitacay. She misses her old home place and climbing the old big tree in their front yard, but she does not miss the kind of life that she would have been destined for if she had remained in Ambitacay. The Ballesteros story is a success story. I’m sure there are many others among 21st century immigrants, or will be, but there is a big difference. Marina’s family came with their education credentials in their hip pocket. Mqny (or most) of the 21st century immigrants now crossing the border do not. The country does not need these. They only add to its problems, including the cost of educating, feeding, and clothing them. Only a few will manage to negotiate the hurdle of preparing themselves to contribute to American society professionally. The vast majority will not. Many will add to America’s drug and crime problem. It is because of my knowledge of the Ballesteros experience that I am prone to say “Let them in!”; but I realize that there has to be controls. They must prepare themselves first. They must, at least, show a willingness to prepare themselves by getting an education first. Just paying the country where they came from will not do it anymore than paying the immigrants who are coming directly. Marina’s Dad realized that giving money directly to his sons and daughters would only corrupt them and send them head long into the drug and crime world; therefore, he never gave them any money directly. Instead, he always funneled the
money through and older brother or an older sister or some other responsible person who would see that the son or daughter did not waste it in wild living. He had already seen that happen to many of his friends in the Philippines and seen there ambitions stopped because they had let themselves be corrupted by the very money needed for their up keep and transportation and educational expenses. I will always admire my Father-in-law for having that insight. He would never have been able to educate professionally his family of 13 children and successfully establish them in America without that kind of planning and foresight.

“Balles”, as a dual graduate engineer (electrical and mechanical) in the 1970’s, had no problem in acquiring an engineering position, first in Canada, and then in the United States, in the 1970’s because both countries were crying for engineering graduates in most fields. If you remember, the 1970’s was the decade of the expansion of NASA, the space race with Russia, and the resulting emphasis on engineering. Marina’s brothers and sisters gave him the nickname, “Balles”, because he was the oldest brother, the principal mentor and advisor in the family, and, in the beginning, their principal manager of the funds needed to pay for their education abroad. If it wasn’t for “Balles”, Marina says that she would never have been able to graduate nursing school in Manila, much less to successfully take a job in Eutaw, Alabama. “Balles” was living in Michigan at the time and living in a house much bigger than the one I had in El Dorado, Arkansas. We are the same age. I was a graduate chemist, who flunked out of engineering at Georgia Tech because of an unwillingness to properly apply myself because of too much American freedom and easy living. What? In Coal Fire, Alabama! It’s true nevertheless! My father just provided me too much easy living without giving me the incentive to “bust my gut” to obtain a proper education against the odds. Take the case of my brother, Cecil, who had ample opportunity under his feet during his time in Washington, D.C., which he threw away in missed opportunities, not only to get an education in the DC area but to avail himself of the job opportunities in the area and in government. Kenneth McCool, who followed the same route as Cecil, later did; but it was too late for Cecil.