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For the second time or so, our paper has highlighted students protesting ICE. As a child of the 60s, I can understand the passion and comradery of the current events. What I can’t condone is the mild, tolerant attitude of the Courier, parents and teachers to the students walking out of school.
Hurling insults, chanting insipid slogans and throwing water bottles isn’t the way to fight this. Do these kids know that ICE is only enforcing laws passed by their congressmen? OK, change the laws.
Are they protesting bias against Hispanics or Somalians? Change the laws. And on the other end, become citizens, learn English, be so hard working everyone will want to hire you or live next to you.
Right now, recent history shows pictures, facts and statistics of thousands of people coming through the borders illegally from 2020 to 2023 … ICE is looking at the preponderance of that evidence. If ICE officials are breaking the law by roughness, false notices, etc., then document it, present your case.
We must have a nation of laws. We can’t have gangs of students, KKK or “activists” making their own rules against police or our law authorities. The fine art of persuasion is needed.
After World War II, gangs were attacking Germans … or Poles or Czechs, whoever talked with an accent, and were calling them Nazis. We had to stop those gangs, and our legal system did, but it took time and effort.
Those legal immigrants learned English, became citizens, worked to establish a good reputation as law-abiding people, were mostly clean and church going. Our generation brought down the wall, but it took much longer for the suspicion of Eastern Europeans to die down.
Learn your history, kids, so the future will be better. We have bad people engaged in trafficking people and children across the border. ICE has a legal duty and job to rid us of those people. We have a country where thousands of people are waiting to enter. We have a process to enter our country.
That process could use improving, streamlining to make it better. But with the graft and the games in Congress, we aren’t getting the best and brightest to work on changing our legal immigration system.
Please learn our history so you can make the world better. Please learn to think and write clearly so you can form an immigration bill that is fair to both new immigrants and current citizens, who have strived to respect the law and may have become citizens themselves.
Are there reasons to be upset at any government agency? Yes. Is civil unrest, i.e. walking out of class, the way to do it? No.
Can you name the year slavery ended in the world? It was far more recent than ours in 1865. Can you tell me what is the average income in capitalistic countries versus socialist countries? Can you state three countries where women aren’t allowed to work outside the home without a man’s permission, even if their children depend on it?
There are many injustices in the world and in our own beloved country. Good for you if you want to fight those injustices. We need you! But do it the smart way. Do it the way a good citizen would. If you must protest, respectfully follow the law. And do it after school.
Jane Thomas
