Letters

Who's really essential

I consider the national parks essential. I consider the Border Patrol essential. I consider food safety inspectors essential. I consider e-Verify to be essential. I consider the IRS essential. The TSA is essential under current law, but I am not sure the security theater is real or effective. These and other low-level federal workers need to be paid.

I consider Congress and its aides and underlings non-essential. I consider the administration and its underlings non-essential. I consider the Supreme Court and its underlings and sycophants non-essential. If anyone can afford to miss a paycheck, they can. Hold all their paychecks during the shutdown. The "work" they produce usually affects the rest of us badly anyway.

Give Trump his barrier in exchange for a satisfactory solution for the Dreamers. If an immigrant serves honorably in the military, he or she can get citizenship. Enforce uniform use of e-Verify. Strictly enforce our existing immigration laws about asylum, and come up with a reasonable guest worker program.

WILLIAM LANDRUM

Mountain Home

True threat to north

National emergency must be declared! Wall must be built across Lake Superior, Lake Huron, and across our entire northern border. Canada will pay for it. Homeland Security/FBI report far more encounters with suspected terrorists at northern border. Example, last year 41 at Canadian border versus only six at southern. The bottom line is the demagogue Trump wants to stop brown people coming in, polluting his white race.

The U.S. has a long history of not welcoming and outright curtailing certain immigrants. Once it was the Catholics, the Chinese, the Germans, the Irish, the Jews, etc. Only white northern European people wanted.

WENDY PATON-BEAUPRE

Franklin

The time to choose?

Does it belong to us? Or does it belong to the rest of the world?

Most of the rest of the world would like to live here. For all of the obvious reasons compared to the rest of the world, who would not want to live here? Safe jobs, safe functioning public schools, safe streets, good medical care, Medicare/Medicaid, secure retirement, Social Security.

Of course, if most of the rest of the world lived here, all of the above would essentially go away due to a huge dilution of resources and huge cultural changes. Our country essentially would become something else.

There are a number of historical examples of when you lose your borders, you lose your country.

MAC FAULKNER

Little Rock

Provided the answer

The essay Sunday by Stephanie Ho, while largely self-congratulatory, was also insightful. She appears to treat opponents of abortion as curiosities. She seems oblivious to or unmoved by the fact that each of her "ordinary life ... routine medical procedures" results in the destruction of a human life.

I have often wondered how abortionists emotionally or in conscience do what they do. Stephanie Ho has provided the answer.

STEPHEN HOFFMAN

Little Rock

Reopen government

The continuing shutdown of the federal government is unconscionable. It is time to get government reopened and get paychecks back in the hands of those who have been furloughed.

The blame for this shutdown belongs squarely on the shoulders of Trump and Republicans who refuse to even consider bills that are being passed by the House to reopen various governmental departments. While I am all for border security, I am not in favor of spending $5.7 billion on a useless monument to the ego that occupies the Oval Office. The lies we continue to hear regarding the number of criminals and terrorists that are crossing our southern border are ridiculous. I have written to Senators Cotton and Boozman as well as Rep. French Hill expressing these opinions and asking for something other than a form letter blaming the Democrats. Cotton and Hill responded almost immediately with a form letter blaming the Democrats. I am still waiting to hear from Boozman.

I implore our senators and representatives to show some real leadership. Our senators should lean on Mitch McConnell to get the House legislation onto the Senate floor and see if they and their colleagues have the guts to vote against people who cannot pay their rent or feed their families due to a temper tantrum from the man in the White House.

A fireman who sets fires does not get to claim credit for putting them out. Trump is manufacturing a crisis so he can take credit for solving it. Our members of Congress should wake up and stop being sycophants for Trump. There is no excuse for what is being done to innocent citizens. Reopen the government and then you can continue to fight over this boondoggle of a wall.

JANET FLOYD

Little Rock

Editorial on 01/16/2019

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