SAN ANGELO, Texas — Shirley Richardson, San Angelo

I disagree with the Standard-Times' editorial last Thursday concerning the wisdom of not deporting illegal immigrants unless they have a "criminal" record.

All who have entered our country illegally have committed a crime, even if that crime is technically a misdemeanor. To hide from law enforcement and prevent their being caught and deported, illegal aliens then commit additional crimes on a daily basis: They use fake or stolen IDs and Social Security numbers, they lie on their W-4 forms so they don't have to pay income tax (or just work for cash to begin with), they send their children to school at our expense and we provide them with free meals at school and "free" medical care in our ERs, and so on.

Illegal immigrants cost our society billions upon billions of dollars. We simply cannot continue to absorb the excess population of the Third World. Our own population is growing rapidly and most of that growth is connected, directly or indirectly, to immigration, both legal and illegal.

The Census Bureau has estimated that we could exceed 420 million population by 2050, and most of this growth will be connected to immigration. With our economy in such dire straits, do we really need to grow so rapidly?

We need to mandate E-verify for all employers, punish employers of illegal immigrants, deport every illegal immigrant we can find, along with his/her family, and eliminate the granting of birthright citizenship to children of people who have no right to be here in the first place. The children of illegal immigrants should inherit their parents' nationality, not ours. We need to legislate the elimination of citizenship for illegal immigrants' children as soon as possible, so we are not rewarding people for committing crimes.

It appears that President Obama is trying to buy ethnic votes by selling our citizenship to illegal immigrants and their families. We must stop this and send them home.
http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2011/aug/31/ed2letter/